Peter Reilly

My mother, who had a long and happy career as a securities lawyer with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, was a single mother of three young children (including me) when she started law school at age 35. I remember many conversations at the dinner table while growing up, where family members would often discuss legal and policy issues of the day — many of them generated by my mother’s law school reading assignments. How many fourth graders get the chance to debate the legal ramifications of setting up a temporary police roadblock to randomly test for drunk drivers? My mother’s law school friends attended many of those dinners, and I admired how fun and interesting they were. Those discussions and experiences definitely planted the seed for my later study of law.

I thoroughly enjoy interacting with students, whether that interaction takes place online or in person.

For my ADR, Negotiation, Professional Responsibility, and Torts classes, I want students to understand both the theory and practice of the subjects — good lawyers must know and understand both. I’m passionate about the classes I teach, and I hope my students can develop a similar enthusiasm for these important subjects and areas of the law.

I clerked for one year for the Massachusetts State Appeals Court and then worked for seven years as attorney-advisor within the Office of General Counsel at the United States Commission on Civil Rights in Washington, D.C. The Commission, which is an independent, bipartisan fact-finding agency of the executive branch, conducted civil rights investigations in areas such as voting rights, university integration, and police misconduct.

My family and my greyhound rescue, EAPR (pronounced “EE-per”), which stands for Elvis Aaron Presley Reilly.

My research focuses generally on the area of Alternative Dispute Resolution, with a strong interest in the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, ethics, emotional intelligence, and theories of influence and persuasion within the context of mediation and negotiation.