Charles Silver

Charles Silver holds the Roy W. and Eugenia C. McDonald Endowed Chair in Civil Procedure at the School of Law at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely in law reviews and peer-reviewed journals. His articles use economic theory, philosophical and doctrinal reasoning, and empirical methodologies to shed light on issues arising in the areas of civil procedure, liability insurance, and the professional regulation of attorneys. He has written about group lawsuits (including class actions and other mass proceedings), attorneys’ fees (including contractual compensation arrangements, common fund fee awards, and statutory fee awards), and professional responsibility (focusing on lawyers involved in civil litigation on behalf of plaintiffs and defendants). In recent years, as Co-Director of the Center on Lawyers, Civil Justice and the Media at the University of Texas, he has worked with a group of empirical researchers on a series of studies of medical malpractice litigation in Texas.

Professor Silver served as Associate Reporter on the Principles of the Law of Aggregate Litigation, published by the American Law Institute in 2010. He taught as a Visiting Professor at the Harvard Law School, the University of Michigan Law School, and the Vanderbilt University Law School.

Professor Silver has given many presentations at academic conferences, including programs sponsored by the American Law and Economics Association, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, the Law & Society Association, RAND, and the Searle Center on Law, Regulation and Economic Growth. He has also spoken at faculty colloquia at law schools across the U.S.

Professor Silver often consults with attorneys and serves as an expert witness. He has strong ties with all segments of the litigating bar. On the plaintiffs’ side, he submitted an expert report on attorneys’ fees in the massive Enron settlement and served as professional responsibility advisor to the private attorneys who handled the State of Texas’ lawsuit against the tobacco industry. On the defense side, he advises on the responsibilities of lawyers retained by insurance carriers to defend liability suits against policyholders. Professor Silver has also testified to legislative committees and submitted amicus curiae briefs to courts on topics ranging from class certification to lawyers’ fiduciary duties to medical malpractice litigation.

In 2009, the Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) of the ABA awarded Professor Silver the Robert B. McKay Law Professor Award for outstanding scholarship on tort and insurance law.