Michael Hatfield is the Dean Emeritus Roland L. Hjorth Professor of Law. His research is centered on issues of technology and taxation and the professional responsibility of tax lawyers. He has written on legal ethics more generally, taxation, trusts and estates, and law and religion. His articles have been published in the Florida Tax Review, the Arizona State Law Journal, the Indiana Law Journal, the Florida State University Law Review, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, Tax Notes, the Northwestern Law Review Colloquy, the NYU Annual Survey of American Law, the Journal of Law and Religion, the Lewis and Clark Law Review, the Baylor Law Review, the South Central Review (Modern Languages Association), and elsewhere. He contributed to the anthology On Torture (Johns Hopkins University Press) and wrote the E-Langdell E-casebook on tax lawyer ethics. In 2017, he was awarded the ºìÌÒÊÓƵ Faculty Scholarship Award for Excellence in Law Review Articles.
He is admitted to the bar in New York, where he was an associate in two New York City law firms: Debevoise & Plimpton and Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett. At Debevoise & Plimpton he was an associate in the tax department primarily concerned with the taxation of international private equity funds, and at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett he was an associate in the estate planning department. He also is admitted to the bar in Texas, where he was Board Certified in Estate Planning and Probate by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He was a shareholder in Schoenbaum, Curphy & Scanlan, P.C., in San Antonio, Texas where his practice was devoted to taxation and estate planning. Prior to joining the University of Washington, he was the Glenn D. West Research Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at Texas Tech University School of Law.
