The Lowell Milken Institute’s first-rate staff includes the executive director, who ensures that the institute’s mission is realized through dynamic curricular innovation, cutting-edge research and relevant and influential conferences and publications. The faculty directors work with the executive director to help shape the institute’s activities and identify those areas and opportunities that enable the Institute to make significant contributions in business law and policy.
Michael Dorff, Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
Michael Dorff is the Executive Director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy and a Professor of Practice. Professor Dorff teaches and researches in areas of corporate law and entrepreneurship, with a focus on social enterprise.
Before joining UCLA, Professor Dorff was the Michael and Jessica Downer Chair and the Director of the Law and Technology Program at Southwestern Law School, where he now holds the title of Professor Emeritus and where he was elected Class Marshall by the graduating class three times. He also served as Southwestern’s founding Associate Dean for Research for five years and previously taught at Rutgers Law School. He is an Honorary Fellow at the Hanken Centre of Accounting, Finance, and Governance in Helsinki, Finland.
Professor Dorff received his B.A. from Harvard College and his J.D. from Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude. After law school, he clerked for Judge Levin H. Campbell on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit before practicing corporate litigation at firms in Houston and New York.
Professor Dorff is the author of two books, Indispensable and Other Myths: Why the CEO Pay Experiment Failed, and How to Fix It (University of California Press 2014) and Becoming a Public Benefit Corporation: Express Your Values, Energize Stakeholders, Make the World a Better Place (Stanford University Press 2023). His work has been published by numerous law reviews such as the Southern California Law Review and the Harvard Business Law Review as well as popular publications such as The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times, and Politico. He has been quoted or his work discussed in publications such as The Economist, Fast Company, Fortune, the Houston Chronicle, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters, Slate, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired, as well as Marketplace and NBC.
Jason Oh, Co-Faculty Director, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy, and Lowell Milken Chair in Law
Jason Oh specializes in tax policy and public finance. He has written extensively on how politics and institutions shape tax and budgetary policy. He has testified in front of the House Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. Congress on issues of tax policy and inequality. He is also a frequent commentator on tax and public finance issues and has appeared on NBC Nightly News, Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, and NPR.
Professor Oh’s work also explores how fiscal instruments could be better designed to respond to international tax evasion and better adapted to different types of assets such as intangibles or closely-held businesses. His articles have appeared in the NYU Law Review, the Penn Law Review, Iowa Law Review, and the Tax Law Review. Professor Oh teaches Federal Income Taxation and Taxation of Business Enterprises. In addition, he serves as a faculty coordinator of the UCLA Colloquium on Tax Policy & Public Finance.
Professor Oh attended the California Institute of Technology for two years (2000-2002) before transferring to Harvard University, where he received his B.A summa cum laude in 2004 with a concentration in physics and mathematics. He earned his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2007. Upon graduation from law school, Oh worked as a tax attorney for Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz where his work involved the tax and structural implications of complex mergers, acquisitions and spin-off transactions involving public and private companies, as well as analyzing tax issues relating to debt restructuring and recapitalization transactions. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, he spent two years as the Acting Assistant Professor of Tax Law at NYU Law School. He currently serves on the board of directors for the National Tax Association.
Andrew Verstein, Co-Faculty Director, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy, and Lowell Milken Chair in Law
Andrew Verstein is a Professor of Law at UCLA School of Law and teaches Business Associations, Contracts, and Securities Litigation. He is also Faculty Co-Director of the Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy. His research lies in market abuse (such as market manipulation and insider trading), fintech, corporate governance, financial indices and benchmarks, and legal theory He has previously taught at East China University of Political Science and Law, Fudan University, the University of Chicago Law School, Wake Forest University of Law, and the Yale Law School.
Professor Verstein received his A.B summa cum laude at Dartmouth College and his J.D. at Yale Law School. He is a member of the American Law Institute and has been quoted in news media such as the Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times.
Verstein’s recent publications have appeared in the Michigan Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Southern California Law Review, the Virginia Law Review, the University of Chicago Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. He is the author, with Lynn M. LoPucki, of Business Associations: A Systems Approach (Aspen Casebook Series 2020).
Sarah Karlsson, Director of Special Projects, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
Sarah Karlsson joined UCLA in July 2010. Before joining the UCLA faculty, she was a transactional attorney first at the law firm of Arnold & Porter, LLP and most recently at Fox Rothschild, LLP. Sarah’s practice focused on acquiring and protecting rights in intellectual and tangible property for her clients in the entertainment, technology and retail fields. While primarily a business lawyer, Sarah has also had substantial litigation experience managing large and small-scale litigation matters. Prior to entering private practice, Sarah served as a law clerk to the Honorable Douglas O. Tice, Jr., Chief Justice of the Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia.
Sarah received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1993 and a J.D. from the William and Mary School of Law in 1998, where she graduated Order of the Coif and was a teaching assistant in the school’s Legal Skills Program.
James D. C. Barrall, Senior Fellow in Residence, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
Jim Barrall joined the Institute in January 2017 on his retirement from Latham & Watkins LLP where he was a partner for 30 years and chaired the firm’s executive compensation and benefits practice. Prior to joining Latham in 1986, he was an associate and then a partner at Ervin, Cohen and Jessup, in Beverly Hills. His legal practice at Latham and ECJ focused on executive compensation and related corporate governance, regulatory and disclosure matters, representing companies, Boards of Directors, Compensation Committees and executives.
Jim is a nationally recognized expert on executive compensation and has been interviewed and quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg BNA, Agenda, Boardmember, Corporate Secretary and other publications. Since 2010, Chambers U.S.A. has listed him in Band 1 nationwide and as its sole “star” California lawyer in its Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation rankings.
Jim is a frequent author, contributing editor and lecturer on executive compensation, corporate governance, disclosure and other regulatory matters. He is a co-author of the chapter on extensions of credit to directors and officers in the American Bar Association’s “Practitioner’s Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.” He has lectured at the UCLA School of Law, the UCLA Anderson School of Management, the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford’s Rock Center for Corporate Governance.
Jim is a member of the Advisory Boards of the UCLA School of Law and the Lowell Milken Institute, and of the Board of the Inner City Law Center, a non-profit provider of legal and other services to veterans, the homeless and the underserved in Los Angeles.
Jim graduated from the University of California at Davis in 1972, with a B.A. degree in Philosophy, and earned his J.D. degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1975, where he served on the UCLA Law Review. In 2008 he was named the Alumni of the Year for Professional Achievement by the UCLA School of Law. In 2016 he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award by the University of California Davis Alumni Association.
Rachel Estrada, Program Manager, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
Rachel Estrada joined UCLA in 2003. She is the program manager for the Lowell Milken Institute and she manages the Business Law Specialization for UCLA School of Law students. She can be reached by email or at (310) 206-1875.
Nancy Le, Events Specialist, Lowell Milken Institute for Business Law and Policy
As a first-generation Vietnamese-American, Nancy is always seeking ways to give back to her community and to advocate for under-served populations. She utilizes her trilingual skills to reach and advocate for diverse communities to increase opportunity, access, and the means to succeed. She previously worked as a Government Benefits paralegal at Legal Aid Foundation, advocating for people living in vulnerable, low-income communities to obtain essential food, housing, medical, and cash benefits to help retain financial stability. Additionally, she serves as an adviser and mentor to low-income, first-generation high-school, and college students.
Nancy received her B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where she double majored in Public Policy and Sociology and minored in Art History. She can be reached at len@law.ucla.edu.