“...I have found that the best way to have law students understand the need for personal attention to their clients’ needs is to give them that attention myself.”

For 25 years, John Matheson has approached teaching with unmatched enthusiasm and dedication. He consistently ranks highest in student evaluations among the Law School’s more than 60 professors. His sense of humor and theatrical timing bring even the most complex principles of corporate and business law to life. “He answered even the silliest questions with patience and care, and would never leave the classroom until the queue of students who had lined up to speak with him...had dwindled to nothing,” recalls a former student.

Outside the classroom, he fosters student learning through independent research projects, programs, and centers he created--like the business law clinic and Emerging Business Legal Audit Program--and personal mentoring. In 2002, he collaborated with 32 law students to expand, revise, and update the Business Law Deskbook, a reference, used by the professional community, that he initially wrote with a third-year student.

Matheson has also helped countless students seeking employment. “[He] diligently wrote hundreds of recommendations...and refused to allow me to give up...in a job search that ultimately spanned several states,” says a former student. His reputation has led him to serve as the Law School’s ambassador in Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Ireland, and in China, where he was on-site program director and professor for the school’s inaugural China Summer Program in 2006. Says a colleague, “John is a teacher’s teacher, an example of the very best.”

Visit the John Matheson faculty Web page here.