M. Todd Henderson, "Lawyer CEOs"

Does legal education matter? In this lecture, Professor Todd Henderson presents some data on this question, using the behavior of corporate executives as an instrument. Looking at the 10% of large, public company CEOs who are lawyers, the talk tries to determine whether CEOs trained as lawyers act differently than CEOs trained in other ways. Do lawyer CEO firms get sued more or less or the same as other firms? Do they manage litigation differently? And, if they do, what is the impact on the bottom line? There is a burgeoning literature on how personal characteristics, from physical traits to birth order to education, impact CEO decision making. The lecture discusses this literature as well, and situates legal education in it. This Loop Luncheon talk was presented on May 4, 2018. Download the slides (PDF): https://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/2018-05/loop_luncheon_2018_slides.pdf