Clark
Freshman

Professor Clark Freshman was a professor of law at the University of Miami from 1995 until 2007 before joining the UC Hastings faculty in 2007. He received his B.A. from Harvard, where his senior thesis facilitated a pardon in the infamous Leo Frank case, an M.A. from University College, Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. He clerked for Judge William Norris of the Ninth Circuit and practiced appellate and entertainment dispute resolution with Manatt Phelps in Los Angeles for several years. He is also a mediator, negotiation trainer, and expert witness on arbitration. He has been an invited speaker on negotiation at many law schools, including Harvard, Yale, and UCLA. His work has appeared in law reviews at Harvard, Stanford, Cornell, and elsewhere.

Professor Freshman’s scholarship and teaching focuses primarily on dispute resolution, including law and psychology, the effect of emotion on dispute resolution, lie detection, and emotional skills. In collaboration with Paul Ekman, the scientific advisor to Fox’s Lie to Me, Professor Freshman trains lawyers and negotiators in lie detection and emotional skills worldwide. Professor Freshman also works with the Center for Contemplative Mind to promote meditation and other contemplative practices among lawyers and law students. His scholarship addresses the relationship between different forms of discrimination in law and social science, including both the role of discrimination in negotiation, proof of discrimination, and ways to prevent negotiation and promote acceptance.

In his spare time, Professor Freshman enjoys all kinds of yoga, weightlifting, meditation, in-line skating, travel, movies and any opportunity to visit the beach or other water with and without his Tibetan terrier, Tara.