Michael Klausner teaches and writes in the areas of corporate law, corporate governance, business transactions and financial regulation. His research has included theoretical and empirical analyses of corporate governance, liability risk for corporate officers and directors, securities litigation, takeover defenses, standardization of contracts, and the economics underlying business transactions. He oversees Stanford Securities Litigation Analytics, which maintains a large database covering securities class actions and SEC enforcement actions, and he is currently writing a book entitled Deals:  The Economic Structure of Business Transactions.”

Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1997, he was a professor of law at New York University School of Law, a White House Fellow and deputy associate director in the Office of Policy Development in the White House, and a corporate law practitioner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. and Hong Kong. He clerked for Justice William Brennan of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge David Bazelon of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.