Jared Ellias

Professor Jared A. Ellias writes and teaches about corporate bankruptcy law and the governance of large firms more generally. He has served as a Teaching Fellow and Lecturer at Stanford Law School, a Visiting Associate Professor at Boston University School of Law, the Bion M. Gregory Chair in Business Law at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and the William Nelson Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He joined the Harvard Law Faculty in July 2022.

His research on corporate bankruptcy topics has been published or is forthcoming in leading peer reviewed law and social science journals (such as the Journal of Legal Studies, the Journal of Legal Analysis and the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies) as well as in leading student-edited law reviews (such as the Yale Law Journal, the Duke Law Journal, the California Law Review, the Southern California Law Review and the Yale Journal on Regulation). He has presented many papers at academic conferences (such as the Annual Meeting of the American Law and Economics Association and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies), faculty workshops at leading law schools (in the United States and abroad), and events for bankruptcy lawyers.  His work has been selected twice for the Stanford/Yale/Harvard junior faculty forum and for presentation at the Weil, Gotshal & Manges Roundtable at Yale Law School. Three of his Articles have been designated by Corporate Practice Commentator as one of the Top 10 Corporate and Securities Laws Articles (2020, 2022 and 2025), and one of his papers won the 2026 Grant Gilmore award for superior writing in the field of commercial finance law from the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers.

In 2020, he was named to the American Bankruptcy Institute’s “40 Under 40” list for his scholarship and professional leadership.

Ellias frequently advises state and federal lawmakers on bankruptcy-related issues and he has testified on corporate bankruptcy issues before the California State Senate and presented research at a wide variety of bankruptcy law conferences and events. He advised the California State Senate on the 2019 bankruptcy of the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, one of the top ten largest industrial bankruptcies of all time that touched on many core issues of interest to the State of California.

Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, Professor Ellias served as Professor of Law and the founding Faculty Director of the Center for Business Law at UC Hastings. He has received the UC Hastings Foundation Faculty Award for Faculty Scholarship, the highest research award given by UC Hastings to faculty.

Before entering academia, Professor Ellias was an associate in private practice at Brown Rudnick LLP in New York, where he represented financial institutions and ad hoc and statutory creditor committees in corporate restructuring transactions, both in and out of bankruptcy court.

Professor Ellias’ current research focuses on the governance of large bankrupt firms and the role played by activist investors and the effect of bankruptcy filings on firms. His research interests include corporate bankruptcy, corporate governance, contract law, empirical methods in social science and law and economics.

Professor Ellias received his J.D. from Columbia Law School in 2008 and his A.B. from the University of Michigan in 2005.