Mahoney to succeed Jeffries at U.Va.

Paul G. Mahoney, a corporate law expert at the University of Virginia, will become the 11th dean of the U.Va. law school on July 1.

In announcing the appointment today, U.Va. President John T. Casteen III had high praise for both Mahoney and the retiring Dean, John C. Jeffries Jr. Succeeding Jeffries, Casteen said, “is not a task for a timid mind or spirit.”

“Mr. Mahoney’s talents, wisdom, and capacity for visionary leadership assure that one of America’s great centers of scholarly excellence will continue to thrive,” Casteen said.

Mahoney, 49, is considered a pioneer in the use of empirical methods in legal scholarship, much of it focused on securities regulation, law and economic development, corporate finance, financial derivatives and contracts.

He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale Law School. He was a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and practiced law with the New York firm of Sullivan & Cromwell before joining the law school faculty in 1990.

As academic associate dean from 1999 to 2004, Mahoney administered the school’s curriculum and academic policies. He is one of only five faculty members to hold the law school’s most prestigious teaching chair, the David and Mary Harrison Distinguished Professorship, and the youngest to have the title.