Maya Steinitz

Biography

Professor Maya Steinitz teaches civil procedure, international arbitration, and international business transactions. Her research focuses on a wide range of topics including the intersection of civil litigation and corporate law, public and business international law, transnational dispute resolution, and the global legal profession. Her scholarship is grounded in both law and economics and comparative law. A comparativist who speaks multiple languages and has practiced across three legal systems, Professor Steinitz brings a distinctly international and interdisciplinary perspective to her scholarship. She is also one of the nation’s leading experts on litigation finance.

Her articles have been published by leading law reviews and journals published by Yale, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, and Vanderbilt Law Schools and Oxford University. Her book about transnational mass tort litigation, The Case for an International Court of Civil Justice, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Her forthcoming books, Litigation Finance, Law Firm Ownership, and the Future of the Legal Profession, and Financing Law: Markets, Democracy, and the Legal Profession, have been accepted for publication by Cambridge University Press.

Professor Steinitz’s scholarly expertise has also been sought by policymakers and institutions in the United States and internationally. She has testified on litigation finance before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Accountability and the New York State Senate Committee on Consumer Protection and served as the U.S. National Expert to the European Commission. She has also been consulted by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, state legislatures, the Arizona Supreme Court, the New York City Bar Association Task Force on Litigation Finance, and the ICCA–Queen Mary Task Force on Third-Party Funding in International Arbitration.

Professor Steinitz has extensive experience in international and transnational dispute resolution, spanning public and private international law. A seasoned arbitrator, she has served in more than 100 arbitrations. Her representative matters include complex multibillion-dollar commercial disputes, sensitive NATO contracting, and a maritime boundary dispute. While in private practice, she led the representation of the emerging government of Southern Sudan in drafting its national and sub-national constitutions and provided legal advice on various aspects of the Sudanese peace process, in a representation The American Lawyer described as “one of the most ambitious international pro bono undertaking[s] ever by a commercial law firm.”

Professor Steinitz has held teaching appointments at Harvard, Columbia, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At Harvard, she teaches Litigation Funding, Law Firm Finance, and the Future of the Legal Profession. At Columbia, Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew University she taught courses in international and comparative law and international dispute resolution. She was instrumental in the establishment of the Israeli-Palestinian ICC Jerusalem Arbitration Center and served on its inaugural bench.

Professor Steinitz has been interviewed and cited by scores of leading news outlets globally, including CBS 60 Minutes, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, NBC, NPR, The Atlantic, Chicago Tribune, Reuters, Bloomberg, and The American Lawyer. She is regularly retained by AmLaw 100 firms, Fortune 500 corporations, financial institutions, and governments across the United States and internationally to testify, advise, and speak.

Before joining academia, Professor Steinitz served as a litigator at Latham & Watkins LLP (2003–2009) and Flemming, Zulack & Williamson LLP (2001–2002). She also clerked for the Hon. Esther Hayut, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel (1998–1999).

Professor Steinitz’s publications are available on the Social Science Research Network.