Paula Schaefer is Interim Dean and Art Stolnitz Distinguished Professor of Law. She joined the law school faculty in 2008 and served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 2019 to 2023. She also served as the inaugural director of the Winston Fellows program. Named for distinguished alumnus Frank Winston (’52), the Winston Fellowship is awarded to outstanding students committed to careers in public interest law and business law.

She regularly teaches Professional Responsibility and Civil Procedure-In Practice. She has also taught Lawyering & Professionalism, Semester in Residence Seminar, E-Discovery, Behavioral Legal Ethics, and Pre-Trial Litigation.

Schaefer’s scholarship explores issues concerning attorney ethics, fiduciary duty, and the legal profession. In addition to authoring numerous law review articles on these topics, she is co-author of the books Professional Responsibility in the Life of the Lawyer and Developing Professional Skills: Professional Responsibility. She is the author of Developing Professional Skills: Civil Procedure and the forthcoming book Civil Procedure for the Real World.  She also researches and writes about legal education, focusing on professionalism and professional identity development issues. She was one of many authors of the book Building on Best Practices: Transforming Legal Education in a Changing World.

An active member of the American Association of Law Schools, Schaefer is currently the chair of the Shared Governance Section and is a past chair of the Professional Responsibility Section. She is a Subject Matter Expert for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, regularly speaks on attorney ethics topics to various audiences, and is a contributing author to the Knoxville Bar Association’s “Schooled in Ethics” column. At Winston Law, she has received the Harold Warner Outstanding Teacher Award, the Bass, Berry & Sims Award for Outstanding Service to the Bench and Bar, and the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution.

Prior to becoming a professor, she practiced in the area of business litigation at Shook, Hardy & Bacon and Bryan Cave in Kansas City, Missouri. After law school, she clerked for Ann K. Covington, the first woman to serve on the Missouri Supreme Court. She has two sons, Henry and Ben.

 

• Education & Experience
• Publications

J.D., 1996, University of Missouri School of Law
B.A., (magna cum laude), 1993, University of Missouri

Curriculum Vitae

Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

Full list of SSRN scholarly papers