Academic Work

Research Interests

Research Statement

My research program investigates a fundamental question in legal doctrine: when courts apply complex, multi-element legal tests, do all the prescribed factors actually matter? Using large-scale empirical analysis powered by computational methods, I study what I call the "multifactor collapse hypothesis," the theory that elaborate balancing tests routinely reduce to a small number of operative factors in practice, even as courts insist on holistic consideration of all elements. If this hypothesis holds across doctrinal areas, it carries significant implications for judicial economy, practitioner strategy, legal education, and legislative design.

My inaugural study tested this hypothesis in trademark law, analyzing approximately 4,000 Trademark Trial and Appeal Board decisions applying the thirteen-factor DuPont likelihood-of-confusion test. The results were striking: only two of thirteen factors predict outcomes with 99.55% accuracy. This finding, published in the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal, challenges fifty years of established doctrine and has attracted attention from practitioners, trade press, and the Supreme Court bar. I am now extending this analysis to federal circuit court confusion decisions to determine whether the same collapse pattern holds across the appellate judiciary.

More broadly, my methodology, which leverages large language models to code legal decisions at a scale previously impractical for individual researchers, is designed to be portable across doctrinal areas. Multifactor tests pervade American law, from the fair use analysis in copyright to the reasonableness inquiry in Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure to the balancing frameworks in dormant Commerce Clause and due process jurisprudence. My long-term research agenda aims to map the gap between doctrine-as-written and doctrine-as-applied across these domains, contributing to a richer empirical understanding of how legal rules actually function in practice.

Publications

Works in Progress

Patents

Media Coverage

Selected Citations

Presentations

Teaching

Southern Illinois University, Simmons School of Law

I teach core doctrinal courses in Contracts and Property and advanced courses in Business Organizations and Intellectual Property, covering contract formation, performance, and remedies; estates in land and modern property doctrine; and agency law, partnerships, corporations, and LLCs. My teaching emphasizes practical application alongside doctrinal rigor, preparing students for both the bar exam and professional practice, and my Intellectual Property teaching draws on extensive practice experience to connect classroom concepts to real-world IP strategy. I also serve as faculty advisor to the Intellectual Property Law Society.

Education

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Bar Admissions & Affiliations