Neel U. Sukhatme was recently appointed the David A. Breach Dean of Law and Professor of Law, with tenure, at the University of Michigan Law School, effective July 1, 2025. He is the first externally-recruited dean in the law school’s 166-year history.

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Currently, Neel is the Associate Dean for Research and Academic Programs, Anne Fleming Research Professor, and Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center. He has also served as an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, as well as the Thomas Alva Edison Visiting Scholar at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Neel received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, where he was awarded the 2014 Towbes Prize for Outstanding Teaching. He received his J.D., cum laude, from Harvard Law School, where he served as Notes Editor of the Harvard Law Review.

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After law school, Neel clerked for federal judges in the Northern District of California and the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and he practiced law at Latham & Watkins LLP. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering (highest honors) with a minor in Mathematics from the University of Illinois. Neel also co-founded Spindrop, a music AI startup with a novel approach for automatically mixing songs.
In 2020, Neel co-founded Free Our Vote, a non-partisan, non-profit organization of data scientists, economists, and legal researchers that seeks to restore voting rights for people with past felony convictions. Free Our Vote has reached out to hundreds of thousands of returning citizens across nine states, clarifying their voter eligibility prior to the 2024 election.

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Neel has published articles in the Harvard Law Review, Duke Law Journal, American Law and Economics Review, and Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, among many others. His current research focuses on empirical topics related to crime, AI and the law, and innovation/patent law. He teaches Property, Patent Law, Advanced Corporate Finance: Quantitative Analysis and Valuation, and Empirical Analysis for Lawyers and Policymakers, and he co-directs the Georgetown Law and Economics Workshop series.