Kent D. Syverud

Courses Taught

Civil Procedure
Insurance Law
Negotiation
Professional Responsibility

Profile

Dean Kent D. Syverud is a leader in American legal education who has written and taught extensively about complex litigation, insurance law, civil procedure, negotiation, and legal education. The recipient of a number of teaching awards, he continues to teach several courses a year at the law school. In addition to his scholarship and teaching, he recently completed his term as Washington University’s associate vice chancellor of Washington, D.C. Programs. Dean Syverud also has served as a court-appointed mediator and a special master for the federal courts, involving litigation on insurance, re-insurance, and settlement issues. He currently is one of two independent trustees of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust, a $20 billion fund created by BP in negotiations with the White House to pay claims arising from the Gulf oil spill. A member of the American Law Institute and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, Dean Syverud is serving as chair of the Council of the ABA’s Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar. He also has served as president of the American Law Deans’ Association, chair of the Board of the Law School Admission Council, and president of the Southeastern Association of American Law Schools. He served as dean of Vanderbilt Law School from 1997–2005 and has taught at several other law schools. Before becoming a law professor, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and for the Hon. Louis F. Oberdorfer, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. He then practiced law for two years at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in Washington, D.C.