About Us

The Center for Corporate and Securities Law helps enrich scholarly and popular debate on a wide range of issues related to corporate governance, financial regulation and other business law topics. The center hosts academic and public conferences, publishes papers and discussions from those conferences, provides point-of-contact for popular and business media on issues of broad public interest, supports faculty and student research and sponsors public lectures.

Directors

Professor Stephen Ferruolo

Stephen C. Ferruolo

Professor of Law

Professor Ferruolo clerked for the Honorable Bruce M. Selya of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. From 2007 to 2011, he served as the founding partner and chair of the San Diego office of Goodwin Procter LLP. Prior to 2007, Ferruolo was a partner and co-chair of the Corporate/VLG Practice Group at Heller Ehrman LLP in its Palo Alto and San Diego offices. From 2003 to 2011, he served as vice president and general counsel of BIOCOM, the world’s largest regional life sciences association, and then as its vice-chairman from 2011 to 2014. 

Ferruolo specializes in the areas of business, corporate and biotech law. He advises USD's National Transactional LawMeet® team and co-teaches in-house corporate counseling and the spring semester of the experiential advocacy practicum.

Professor Caley Petrucci

Caley Petrucci

Professor of Law

Professor Petrucci joined the USD Law faculty in Fall of 2023. She was previously a Climenko Fellow and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School, where she taught, among other courses, an upper-level elective on mergers & acquisitions (M&A) innovation. Her scholarship and teaching interests include corporations, contracts, M&A, negotiation, and corporate governance. Professor Petrucci’s current research focuses on dealmaking in corporate law. She examines underlying issues of control, fairness, and efficiency in corporate transactions, the relationships among and between shareholders, stakeholders, and boards, and the development of deals (and their contractual arrangements) over time. In doing so, her work seeks to inform various corporate actors, including courts, boards, and transaction planners, in order to facilitate more effective, efficient, and equitable corporate transactions.

Affiliated Faculty Members

David McGowan
Professor of Law

Ted Sichelman
Professor of Law

Thomas A. Smith
Professor of Law

Mary Jo Wiggins
Professor of Law

Christopher Wonnell
Professor of Law

Adjunct Faculty Members

Randall Baron
Visiting Fellow

Koji Fukumura
Visiting Fellow

Robert Jafek
Research Fellow