Andrew Kaufman

Andrew Kaufman brings more than 40 years of experience in private practice and more than a decade of experience teaching transactional courses and practice skills. He has mentored transactional law students at several leading law schools including Vanderbilt University Law School, UCLA School of Law, and the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.

From a transactional lawyer’s perspective, Kaufman teaches courses that address business associations, commercial law including secured transactions, leveraged buyouts, mergers and acquisitions, risk management and compliance, syndicated loan transactions and other current issues in transactional practice. When feasible, Kaufman combines the doctrinal elements of his subject matter with the experiential. He uses hypotheticals based on actual transactions to help students understand the inherent and external risks involved, while also developing lawyering skills to mitigate those risks.

Kaufman was a long-time partner with Kirkland & Ellis LLP handling matters primarily from their Chicago and New York offices. He founded and, for many years, supervised the firm’s Debt Finance Group and chaired the firm’s Opinions Committee. Now of counsel to the firm, Kaufman continues to participate in its professional training programs and to advise on internal risk management matters and client transactions.

At Vanderbilt, Kaufman served as an adjunct professor from 2005-2009. In 2009, he was appointed their first professor of the practice of law for the Law and Business Program, a position he held for next three years. He spent the 2012-13 academic year at UCLA, where he served as professor from practice and the initial executive director of UCLA’s Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. He began offering his transactional weekend short courses at the USC Gould School of Law in 2008, and he continues to present them regularly at both Vanderbilt and USC.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

CNET
August 20, 2019
Re: Thomas Lenz

Thomas Lenz was quoted on a YouTubers Union in Germany challenging Google to demand more insights on how the company decides whether some videos are taken down or demonetized. Lenz said the company gave a range of reactions when it handled similar situations in the past."If you've seen the different facets of these issues arise, you study those and how best to respond," said Lenz, referring to Google's management. "You're going to be more savvy with those issues."

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Dorothy S. Lund
June, 2019

"Toward a Mission Statement for Mutual Funds in Shareholder Litigation," National Business Law Scholars Conference, Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, CA.

Daniel Klerman
June, 2019

“Law Matters – Less Than We Thought,” Bolch Judicial Institute, Duke Law School, Durham, NC.

Daniel Klerman
June, 2019

“Forum Selling Abroad,” Comparative Law Work-In-Progress Workshop, University of Illinois College of Law, Champaign, IL.