Clay Halvorsen (JD 1985) teaches Business for Lawyers, designed to empower law students with the basic principles and practices of contemporary business so they can effectively advise and provide legal services to businesses and other clients. Key business concepts covered in the course include accounting, finance, risk management, negotiation, and leadership.

Halvorsen’s extensive business experience includes serving for more than a decade as senior vice president, general counsel and secretary of The Irvine Company LLC, a diversified, privately held real estate investment company and master planner of the Irvine Ranch. Halvorsen’s past roles include executive vice president, general counsel and secretary of Standard Pacific Homes, a Fortune 500 company engaged in the homebuilding, mortgage and title businesses.

Halvorsen began his career at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, a leading international law firm, where he was elected as a partner in the firm’s corporate finance group. In this role he represented private and public start-ups, middle-market companies and large corporations in a wide variety of industries and transactions, including acquisitions, financings and securities law matters.

In 2022, Halvorsen founded Halvorsen Coach + Advise which provides leadership executive coaching and advice to a wide variety of C-Suite executives, entrepreneurs, middle managers and attorneys. He also served as the interim CEO of the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, a Laguna Beach-based nonprofit that rescues, rehabilitates and releases stranded marine mammals and performs related research and education. Halvorsen also served as a trustee on the board of Pennymac Mortgage Investment Trust (NYSE:PMT), a publicly traded specialty finance company that invests primarily in residential mortgage loans and mortgage related assets.

Halvorsen earned his law degree, with honors, from USC. He also holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from California State University, Northridge, where he graduated magna cum laude.