Michael Chasalow directs the USC Small Business Clinic, where students gain hands-on experience handling transactional legal problems and providing basic corporate legal assistance to small businesses, entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations. He also teaches Counseling the Start-up Company, Partnerships & Limited Liability Companies and Business Organizations. Chasalow’s scholarly interests involve the development and structure of business ventures as well as corporate governance issues and issues relating to the governance of partnerships and LLCs. In the spring of 2016 Chasalow was awarded the William A. Rutter Distinguished Teaching Award and also received the Student Bar Association Faculty Member of the Year Award.

Chasalow attended UC Berkeley, where he received a BA in both English and Economics. He received his JD from Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law and his MBA at the UCLA. After law school Chasalow practiced law for several years, initially as a transactional attorney with Latham and Watkins in Los Angeles, where he specialized in such complex corporate transactions as mergers and acquisitions and the issuance of sophisticated debt securities. Chasalow also spent several years involved with private equity groups focused on the development and financing of start-up and early stage companies.

In 1993, Chasalow founded the ARI Consulting Group, which provided business consulting and legal services to start-up companies. In 2004, he was given the Outstanding Adjunct Professor Award by USC Law’s Student Bar Association. He has also taught at Whittier School of Law and Loyola Law School.