Aaron Simowitz joined the CLI as a fellow in 2014 and became a program affiliate scholar in 2016. Aaron is an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law (WUCL), where he teaches international business transactions, debtor and creditor law, negotiation, civil procedure, and seminars on business negotiations and on resolving business disputes. His research focuses on cross-border business transactions, litigation, and arbitration.

Aaron has also been a research fellow at the Center for Transnational Litigation, Arbitration, and Commercial Law at NYU School of Law, where he taught International Litigation & Arbitration with Professor Linda Silberman, Forum Shopping in International Commercial Law with Professor Franco Ferrari, and the first-year Lawyering course. He has also taught the International Business Transactions and Transnational Litigation courses at Columbia Law School.

Aaron is the chair-elect of the AALS Section on Conflict of Laws and the co-director of the Business Lawyering Institute (BLI) at Willamette University. Aaron co-convened the CLI-WUCL symposium on “The Extraterritorial State” and the inaugural BLI Symposium on “Teaching Better Business Lawyering.” He received the Young Scholar’s Award from the American Society of International Law’s Private International Law Interest Group for his work on judgment and award enforcement against intangible assets. He practiced at the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and clerked for Judge D. Brooks Smith of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Aaron graduated from the University of Chicago Law School, where he received an Olin Student Fellowship, a Bradley Student Fellowship, and the Bustin Award for the paper making the most valuable contribution to the improvement of government.