Simowitz stays busy with scholarly pursuits, ALI membership

As if he wasn’t busy enough, in September 2023, Professor Aaron Simowitz was elected to the American Law Institute (ALI).

The ALI is more than 100 years old and is the leading independent, nonprofit organization that focuses on improving American laws, Simowitz says. Members take part in the ALI to develop the law and give back to their profession.

As a member, he is a part of four “member consultative groups,” which are groups of members who volunteer to read drafts of projects, discuss them and provide comments.

Simowitz joined Willamette Law in 2016 and is an associate professor, teaching Civil Procedure, Bankruptcy, Negotiation and a seminar on negotiating and drafting a complex transaction. He is also the director of the Business Lawyering Institute (BLI) at the school.

In 2021, along with Professor John Coyle of UNC Law and Professor William Dodge of UC Davis Law, he took on the authorship of the “Annual Survey of Choice of Law in the American Courts” after Professor and Dean Emeritus Symeon Symeonides completed his 30th and final survey.

Research and scholarly work is part of his job, part of what he was hired to do. But the most important thing, he says, is that he enjoys it.

I tell my students that my life is very full right now. I really only have time for family and work — but I love my family and my work. What more can you really ask for?

"Working on the survey has been a gift," Simowitz says. "I get to work with two wonderful colleagues, Bill Dodge and John Coyle. All three of us get to step into this legacy that Symeon built up over 30 remarkable years. And (as Symeon promised), the practice of reading so many cases decided each year in my areas of study has already begun to affect my scholarship."

“Teaching is also a gift," Simowitz continued. "Teaching is something that we get to do, not something we have to do. I do not necessarily enjoy every single moment — but stepping into the classroom is always a high point of any week for me.”

Simowitz has a deep interest in experiential learning and simulation-based teaching, something that feeds into his work with the BLI. He has worked to bring experiential opportunities to the 1L classroom, as well as explore different approaches for other classes.

Each year, he tries to reimagine at least one.

“This year, in the business negotiations seminar, we were able to do a new business-focused simulation every other week, in contexts ranging from employment agreements to joint ventures to venture capital to fights for corporate control,” Simowitz explains. “As one of my students said in their review: ‘The better you understand a client’s business, the more effective you can be in negotiating for their interest.’”

Simowitz is taking his first sabbatical this year. One of his goals to work on is bringing the BLI back up to its pre-pandemic level of events, with a possible negotiations moot court, events for transactional lawyers and a symposium on simulation-based teaching for business law courses in the works.