Personal Summary

Paul Kirgis is a Professor of Law at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana, where he leads the Alternative Dispute Resolution program and teaches Evidence and other courses related to civil litigation. An accomplished mediator and former Chair of the AALS Dispute Resolution Section, Professor Kirgis is an authority on dispute resolution both within and outside of the traditional civil litigation paradigm. His articles have appeared in the Harvard Negotiation Law Review, the Negotiation Journal, the Oregon Law Review, the William & Mary Law Review, the Ohio State Law Review, and the Georgia Law Review, among others.

Professor Kirgis served as Dean of the Blewett School of Law from 2015-2021. During his tenure as Dean, the School of Law saw its first-time pass rate on the Montana State Bar Exam increase from 67.5% to 92%, and its full-time, long-term JD-required employment rate increase from 77% to 88%, while the diversity of the entering class increased from 13.6% to 17.3%. He led the largest fundraising campaign in the School of Law’s history, and shepherded the move of the MPA program to the law school and the subsequent creation of the Department of Public Administration & Policy, making the School of Law the only one in America with an accredited MPA program. In the spring of 2018, he served as Acting Provost of the University of Montana, leading a University-wide academic program prioritization effort.

Prior to joining the University of Montana, Professor Kirgis taught at St. John's University School of Law in New York City, where he founded and served as Faculty Chair of the Hugh L. Carey Center for Dispute Resolution. For his work building the dispute resolution program, he was awarded the Faculty Outstanding Achievement Medal by St. John’s University. He was twice voted Professor of the Year by the St. John’s students.

Before entering teaching, Professor Kirgis practiced with two major law firms in Washington, D.C., where he had extensive litigation experience in areas including defamation, insurance coverage, commercial disputes, antitrust, government contracts, and tax.

Publications

Enforcing Arbitration Agreements Involving Indian Tribes (work-in-progress).

“Whimsy Little Contracts” with Unexpected Consequences: An Empirical Analysis of Consumer Understanding of Arbitration Agreements (with Jeff Sovern, Elayne Greenberg, and Yuxiang Liu) 75 Maryland Law Review 1 (2015).

Bargaining with Consequences: Leverage and Coercion in Negotiation, 19 HARVARD NEGOTIATION LAW REVIEW 69 (2014).

Status and Contract in an Emerging Democracy: The Evolution of Dispute Resolution in Ghana, 16 CARDOZO JOURNAL OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION 101 (2014).

Hard Bargaining in the Classroom: Realistic Simulated Negotiations and Student Values, 28:1 NEGOTIATION JOURNAL 93 (2012)(peer-reviewed).

The Knowledge Guild: The Legal Profession in an Age of Technological Change: Review Essay of RICHARD SUSSKIND, THE END OF LAWYERS? RETHINKING THE NATURE OF LEGAL SERVICES, 11 NEVADA L.J. 184 (2010).

Arbitration, Bankruptcy and Public Policy: A Contractarian Analysis, 17 AMERICAN BANKRUPTCY INSTITUTE L. REV. 503 (2009).

Judicial Review and the Limits of Arbitral Authority: Lessons from the Law of Contract, 81 ST. JOHN'S L. REV. 99 (2007).

The Contractarian Model of Arbitration and Its Implications for Judicial Review of Arbitral Awards, 85 OREGON L. REV. 1 (2006).

The Right to a Jury Decision on Sentencing Facts after Booker: What the Seventh Amendment Can Teach the Sixth, 39 GEORGIA L. REV. 895 (2005).

A Legisprudential Analysis of Evidence Codification: Why Most Evidence Rules Should Not Be Codified—But Privilege Law Should Be, 38 LOYOLA L.A. L. REV. 809 (2004).

Race, Rankings, and the Part-Time "Free Pass", 54 JOURNAL OF LEGAL EDUCATION 395 (2004).

Questions of Fact in the Practice of Law: A Response to Allen & Pardo's Facts in Law, Facts of Law, 8 INT'L J. EVID. & PROOF 47 (2004)(peer reviewed).

The Right to a Jury Decision on Questions of Fact Under the Seventh Amendment, 64 OHIO STATE L.J. 1125 (2003).

The Problem of the Expert Juror, 75 TEMPLE L. REV. 493 (2002).

Meaning, Intention, and the Hearsay Rule, 43 WM. & MARY L. REV. 275 (2001).

Apportioning Tort Damages in New York: A Method to the Madness, 75 ST. JOHN'S L. REV. 427 (2001).

Curtailing the Judicial Certification of Expert Witnesses, 24 AM. J. TRIAL AD. 347 (2000).

Section 1500 and the Jurisdictional Pitfalls of Federal Government Litigation, 47 AM. U. L. REV. 301 (1997).

The Constitutionality of State Allocation of Punitive Damage Awards, 50 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 843 (1993).