History

Currently

HISTORY

The Center for Advanced Due Diligence Studies was founded by Professor Gary M. Lawrence.

In 1991, Professor Lawrence developed a formal due diligence training program for attorneys, investors, investment advisors, investment stewards, directors, underwriters and other transactional principals and professionals. The following year ALM, a leading publisher of scholarly works, asked Professor Lawrence to expand the program’s training manual into a formal treatise. After two more years of intensive research and academic collaboration, the first comprehensive due diligence treatise, Due Diligence in Business Transactions, was published. That work is now approaching its third decade of publication.

Today, Professor Lawrence works to enhance due diligence and transactional scholarship and practice through teaching, training, writing and speaking and through the activities of the Center for Advanced Due Diligence Studies. He has been a member of or active in Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (“SIFMA”) Compliance and Legal Society, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, the Global Association of Risk Professionals, the Academy of Financial Services, the National Association of Corporate Directors, and the American Securitization Forum, among others.  His scholarly work has been cited authoritatively in numerous publications, in filings before the Supreme Court of the United States, and by the Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York.  He has advised the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and has served as a transactional expert in a number of high-profile securities and other cases.

Professor Lawrence is a member of the adjunct faculty of the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University where he teaches advanced due diligence studies to JD, MBA and LLM candidates. During the summer term of 2015, he was Visiting Due Diligence Scholar in Residence at Queen Mary, University of London.