Wayne Barnes

Wayne Barnes is a Professor of Law and Dean’s Research Chair at Texas A&M University School of Law. His scholarship examines the law of contracts — particularly the doctrine of assent and the problem of standard form and boilerplate agreements, which consumers routinely accept without reading. His work has appeared in leading law reviews including the Washington Law Review, the Maryland Law Review, the Georgia Law Review, the Florida State University Law Review, the University of Miami Law Review, the Pepperdine Law Review, and the Tulane Law Review, and has been cited by courts and by the principal treatises in the field, including Farnsworth on Contracts, Williston on Contracts, and the American Law Institute’s Principles of the Law of Software Contracts. HeinOnline’s most recent Scholarly Impact Rankings place him among the 100 most-cited contracts scholars at ABA-approved law schools.

Professor Barnes is a co-author of White, Summers, Barnhizer, Barnes & Snyder’s Uniform Commercial Code (7th ed.), the leading hornbook on the UCC, as well as companion concise hornbooks on secured transactions, sales law, and payment systems. He is also co-author of Sales: A Contemporary Approach (2025), Learning Basic Commercial Law Concepts (2d ed.), The Complete Guide to Mechanic’s and Materialmen’s Lien Laws of Texas, and author of A Short and Happy Guide to Secured Transactions. Within the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section, he serves as a co-editor of the annual Uniform Commercial Code Survey published in The Business Lawyer, where he has written the survey’s annual treatment of the CISG for over a decade.

At Texas A&M, Professor Barnes teaches Contracts, Torts, Core Commercial Concepts, Secured Transactions, Bankruptcy, and Consumer Law. He serves as faculty advisor to the Texas A&M Law Review, and his students elected him Hooding Professor for the J.D. Class of 2022 and, three times, Professor of the Year. He is also a national lecturer for Kaplan Bar Review on contracts, the Uniform Commercial Code, and the Multistate Bar Examination. Before entering academia, he practiced commercial litigation and bankruptcy law at Strasburger & Price in Dallas and at Gibson, Ochsner & Adkins in Amarillo. He earned his J.D. summa cum laude from Texas Tech University School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the Texas Tech Law Review and a member of the Order of the Coif, and his B.B.A. in finance, cum laude, from the University of North Texas.