Richard Bierschbach

Associated Law Professor

New York

Richard A. Bierschbach is Dean and Professor of Law at Wayne State University Law School and an Associated Law Professor in the firm’s Supreme Court & Appellate Litigation practice.

Richard has substantial experience advising clients across a wide range of cases, with particular focus on matters involving novel or complex constitutional, statutory, administrative, or other public-law issues, appeals, and legal and strategic counseling. A former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and to Judge A. Raymond Randolph on the D.C. Circuit, Richard served both as a Bristow Fellow in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and as an Attorney-Adviser in its Office of Legal Counsel. During that time, he regularly counseled federal government attorneys on appellate and legal strategy issues and provided written and oral advice to the White House, the Attorney General and other executive branch offices on a broad spectrum of constitutional, statutory, and regulatory questions. He also practiced as an appellate litigator in the New York office of Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering from 2001-03 and, more recently, as of counsel in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. Before his appointment as Dean, he was a tenured professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he was Vice Dean from 2015-16.

Richard teaches and writes in the areas of administrative law, criminal justice, and corporations. His published work has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, the Michigan Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Georgetown Law Journal, and the University of Minnesota Law Review, among other journals. He twice—in 2013 and 2015—received the Best Professor Award from Cardozo’s graduating class. He has been quoted on legal developments by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC News, Slate, and other media.

  • Matters that Richard has handled on behalf of corporate and individual clients include defamation lawsuits; constitutional challenges to executive, legislative and regulatory actions at the state and federal levels; international trade disputes; criminal price-fixing appeals; First Amendment, election-law, and campaign finance issues; punitive damages actions; internal investigations; securities disputes; allegations of criminal fraud and insider trading; jurisdiction and choice of law issues; bankruptcy appeals; statutory challenges to major environmental and financial regulatory initiatives; tax litigation; class actions; copyright disputes; complex contract litigation; antitrust matters; and issues of constitutional criminal procedure. He has principally authored or participated in authoring numerous appellate briefs and dispositive motions in federal and state courts as well as merits briefs, petitions for and briefs in opposition to certiorari, and amicus briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court.