Rachel J. Anderson is a Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her academic work focuses on lawmaking and institutional governance, including legislative drafting, international and comparative business law, corporate governance, and poverty law and policy. Across these fields, her work draws on an unusual combination of legal scholarship, international private practice, senior state-government service, public-policy experience, and academic institution-building.

Professor Anderson is the author of International, Transnational, and Comparative Business Transactions (Aspen Publishing, 2025), a casebook addressing the domestic, foreign, international, and transnational legal regimes governing cross-border business activity. Her broader scholarship addresses international investment, transnational corporations, corporate governance, human rights, legal institutions, and the operation of law across national and institutional boundaries.

She is also under contract with Carolina Academic Press for Legislative Drafting: A Public Policy Approach, with a supplement and teacher’s manual. The forthcoming casebook is organized around three dimensions of legislative drafting: its legal and institutional foundations, legislative policy and design, and an integrated legislative drafting framework. It treats legislative drafting as work that begins with identifying and analyzing a problem and extends through policy choice, legal analysis, statutory design, evaluation, and professional finalization. The book draws on law, public policy, public administration, program evaluation, and economics and includes dedicated treatment of AI-assisted legislative drafting, public participation and lobbying, and international and comparative legislative drafting.

Professor Anderson’s current research agenda also includes artificial intelligence and lawmaking, with particular attention to legislative institutions, legislative work, and the processes through which public policy is translated into law.

Her academic work is informed by substantial experience in government and international legal practice. From 2019 to 2021, Professor Anderson served as General Counsel to the Office of the Nevada Attorney General and as a member of the Attorney General’s senior executive team. As the Office’s senior legal advisor on a broad range of legal and policy matters, she advised on governance, ethics, institutional operations, and other issues arising in the administration of state government. That service gave her direct experience with the interpretation and implementation of law within a statewide public institution.

Professor Anderson began her legal career in the London office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where her practice included corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance, and international and cross-border transactions. Before law school, she worked in Germany in international consulting and policy development. Her work included projects involving European institutions and national and local governmental counterparts in Central and Eastern Europe, and she ultimately led the firm’s policy and human-resources development activities. Her international professional experience, legal practice, and government service continue to inform the comparative and institution-focused perspective of her academic work.

At Boyd, Professor Anderson has taught across the international, business, public-law, and experiential curricula. Her courses include Public International Law, International Human Rights, International Business Transactions, Business Organizations, Consumer Law, Legislative Drafting, Poverty Law & Social Change, and the Poverty Law & Policy Clinic. She founded and directed Boyd’s Poverty Law & Policy Clinic, where students undertook legal research, legislative drafting, and policy work involving governmental and community partners. UNLV recognized this work with its 2024 Community Engagement Service-Learning Award.

Professor Anderson also holds significant academic and institutional leadership roles. She directs Boyd’s International, Transnational & Comparative Law Program and co-directs the Business & Commercial Law Concentration. Her faculty-governance service at Boyd and UNLV spans curriculum, faculty appointments, tenure and promotion, academic leadership, and institutional planning, including service on UNLV’s University Tenure and Promotion Committee.

Nationally, Professor Anderson currently serves as Chair of the Association of American Law Schools Section on Poverty Law and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Society of Comparative Law, where she has held a board position for many years. Her professional and public service also includes membership on the Nevada Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission and service on the Board of Directors of Nevada Legal Services.

Professor Anderson presents her scholarship and professional expertise to academic, judicial, governmental, and professional audiences in the United States and internationally. Her work and service have received recognition from academic, legal, governmental, and professional institutions. Her honors include the National Bar Association Women Lawyers Division’s Outstanding Non-Traditional Career Award, UNLV’s Community Engagement Service-Learning Award, the State Bar of Nevada’s Medal of Justice, and the American Bar Association State and Local Government Law Section’s Jefferson B. Fordham Law Office Accomplishment Award as part of the Nevada Attorney General’s policy research team.

Professor Anderson received her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she served as Articles Editor of the California Law Review, Executive Editor of the Berkeley Journal of International Law, and Managing Editor of the African-American Law & Policy Report. She earned an M.A. in International Policy Studies from Stanford University, with a concentration in international political economy, and completed university studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin