Nora Freeman Engstrom

Nora Freeman Engstrom is the Ernest W. McFarland Professor of Law and co-director of the Deborah L. Rhode Center on the Legal Profession at Stanford Law School.

She is the 2025 recipient of the William L. Prosser Award and is also the 2024 recipient of a lifetime achievement award furnished by the Center for Litigation and Courts at U.C. College of the Law S.F. She is an elected member of the ALI, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, and, from 2023-2024, she served as the chair of the Section on Torts and Compensation Systems of the AALS.

Before joining Stanford’s faculty in 2009, she was a Research Dean’s Scholar at Georgetown University Law Center and an associate at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP. She was also a law clerk to Judge Merrick B. Garland of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

She graduated from Dartmouth College in 1997, summa cum laude, and from Stanford Law School in 2002, with distinction and as a member of Order of the Coif.