George Triantis, JSD ’89, is the Richard E. Lang Professor of Law and Dean of Stanford Law School and the 15th Dean of Stanford Law School. Dean Triantis has been a member of the SLS faculty since 2011 and the Charles J. Meyers Professor Law and Business since 2015. He served as Senior Associate Vice Provost of Research for Stanford University from 2020 to 2024, focusing on issues of research integrity and policy, international engagements, and risk management. Additionally, from 2013-2024, he served on the Provost’s Budget Group. Previously, he served as Associate Dean for Research for Stanford University (2014-2017), Associate Dean for Strategic Planning at SLS (2013-17), and was the inaugural faculty director of the Stanford Cyber Initiative (2014-2017).
Before he joined the SLS faculty in 2011, Dean Triantis was the Eli Golston Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and since then, has been the Sullivan & Cromwell Visiting Professor of Law. He previously held professorships at the University of Chicago and the University of Virginia School of Law. He began his academic career as Assistant Professor in the Schools of Law and of Management at the University of Toronto, after having practiced corporate and banking law in Toronto.
An expert in the fields of contracts, commercial law, business law, and bankruptcy, Dean Triantis is widely recognized for integrating economic theory with legal practice. He is an affiliated faculty member with the Rock Center for Corporate Governance, a joint initiative of SLS and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Subjects he has taught at SLS include bankruptcy, contract law and design, debt restructuring, and advanced contracts and commercial transactions, as well as in the Law School’s Global Quarter in Europe
Triantis’ scholarship lies at the intersection of law, economics and business. In his work on bankruptcy law, Triantis published in the early 1990s a foundational article on debtor-in possession financing and recently two articles on the role of bankruptcy processes in public policy decision-making. In the field of commercial transactions he pioneered the application of options theory to the study of contracts and authored a series of articles that develop principles of contract design. His wide-ranging scholarship has focused on negotiation dynamics and the impact of bargaining power, as well as timing choices in the decisions to enter into binding agreements, modify and enforce them. He has analyzed the relationships between contract design and dispute resolution, and the choice between precise and vague provisions, as well as the structure of remedies in commercial contracts.
Dean Triantis is an elected member of the American Law Institute, a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a fellow of the World Commerce and Contracting Association.
He is a past editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and past director of the American Law & Economics Association.
