Andrew Kaufman
USC Gould School of Law

Andrew Kaufman brings more than 40 years of experience in private practice and more than a decade of experience teaching transactional courses and practice skills. He has mentored transactional law students at several leading law schools including Vanderbilt University Law School, UCLA School of Law, and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

From a transactional lawyer’s perspective, Kaufman teaches courses that address business associations, commercial law including secured transactions, leveraged buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, risk management and compliance, syndicated loan transactions and other current issues in transactional practice. When feasible, Kaufman combines the doctrinal elements of his subject matter with the experiential. He uses hypotheticals based on actual transactions to help students understand the inherent and external risks involved, while also developing lawyering skills to mitigate those risks.

Kaufman was a long-time partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP handling matters primarily from their Chicago and New York offices. He founded and, for many years, supervised the firm’s Debt Finance Group and chaired the firm’s Opinions Committee. Now of counsel to the firm, Kaufman continues to participate in its professional training programs and to advise on internal risk management matters and client transactions.

At Vanderbilt, Kaufman served as an adjunct professor from 2005-2009. In 2009, he was appointed their first professor of the practice of law for the Law and Business Program, a position he held for next three years. He spent the 2012-13 academic year at UCLA, where he served as professor from practice and the initial executive director of UCLA’s Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. He began offering his transactional weekend short courses at the USC Gould School of Law in 2008, and he continues to present them regularly at both Vanderbilt and USC.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Bloomberg Government
June 22, 2022
Re: Franita Tolson

Franita Tolson was interviewed about how federal lawsuits from North Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas test the limits of the Voting Rights Act, the boundaries of state government authority, and the ability of voting rights groups to file racial gerrymandering cases. “These doctrines and approaches in these cases fundamentally reset the rules of the game,” she said. “In 2030 we will live in a completely different world than we lived in in 2020, and 2020 was not favorable to minority voters at all.”

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Robin Craig
March, 2022

"Saltwater Sovereignty: Tribal Marine Management Authority Along the Pacific Coast.” Online Environmental Law Workshop. University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore, MD.

Daniel Klerman
March, 2022

“Comment on Choi, Erickson, & Pritchard, ‘Coalitions among Plaintiffs’ Attorneys in Securities Class Actions’,” Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, Virtual, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Robin Craig
March, 2022

“Who’s on First? The Mind-Blowing Attempt to Conceptualize Deference in the Midst of Decision Delays and Agency Repeals,” J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Environmental Law Symposium for the George Washington University School of Law, Virtual, Washington, D.C.