Biography

Daniel R. Fischel was born in 1950. He earned his BA in American history in 1972, with a minor in economics, from Cornell University as well as an MA in American history from Brown University in 1974. He attended the University of Chicago Law School where he served as the Comment Editor of the University of Chicago Law Review and was elected to the Order of the Coif. While at the Law School, Fischel won the Casper Platt Award for the best student paper and the Jerome N. Frank Prize for excellence in legal writing for his work on the Law Review. He graduated cum laude in 1977 and clerked for Judge Thomas E. Fairchild, the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1977-1978. He then clerked for Associate Justice Potter Stewart of the United States Supreme Court in 1978-1979. After his Supreme Court clerkship, Fischel spent a year in private practice at the firm Levy and Erens in Chicago.

In 1980, Fischel began teaching at the Northwestern University School of Law. He first came to the University of Chicago Law School as a visiting professor during the 1982-1983 academic year. In 1984, Fischel joined the faculty in a permanent position. Fischel directed the Law School’s Law and Economics Program from 1984-1991. From 1987-1990, Fischel also held a faculty position at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. In 1989, Fischel was named the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law and Business, a title he held until 2006, when he became the Lee and Brena Freeman Professor Emeritus of Law and Business, and Senior Lecturer. Fischel served as the eleventh dean of the Law School from 1999-2001.

Fischel is the Chairman and President of Compass Lexecon, a leading consulting firm that pioneered the application of economics to legal and regulatory matters. In 1978, he helped University of Chicago Law School professors Richard A. Posner and William M. Landes and fellow alum Andrew Rosenfield ’78 co-found what was then called Lexecon (“Lex” from the Latin for law, and “econ” for economics). Fischel has provided expert testimony in a variety of legal proceedings regarding securities, commodities, corporate law, the regulation of financial markets, and the applied economics of corporate finance. His economic consulting clients have included the New York Stock Exchange, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

Fischel is a member of the American Economic Association and the American Finance Association and sits on the Board of Directors for the Center for the Economy and the State. He is a former chair of the American Association of Law Schools’ Section on Law and Economics and a former advisor to the Harvard Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard University. He previously served as a member of the Board of Overseers of the Becker-Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago as well as a member of the Mid-America Institute Task Force on Stock Market Collapse. Fischel serves as a referee for several academic journals, including: Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Law and Economics, and Journal of Legal Studies.

Fischel is married to Sylvia Neil, a prominent attorney and philanthropist in Chicago.