Fairfield to Give Talk in Honor of Bain Family Professorship

By Peter Jetton
March 19, 2018

Joshua Fairfield, William Donald Bain Family Professor of Law, will give a talk on Thursday, March 29 at 4 p.m. in Lewis Hall Classroom C in honor of his professorship.

In his lecture, Fairfield will tackle the question of whether the law can keep up with technological change. If legal rules follow historical trends, they will continue to lag behind technological advances. Fairfield will explore new ways of looking at law, and new ways of engaging with legal questions, that may help law to remain relevant in the face of rampant scientific progress.

Fairfield is a nationally recognized scholar on privacy, electronic commerce, online economics, virtual worlds, electronic payments, and cryptocurrencies. He came to Washington and Lee in 2007 as an Associate Professor of Law. Prior to joining the faculty at W&L, Fairfield served as Associate Professor of Law for two years at Indiana University School of Law’s Bloomington campus.

During his time at W&L, Fairfield has earned many notable awards. In 2012-2013, he was awarded a Fulbright to conduct research related to trans-Atlantic privacy law at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. In 2013, he was elected into the American Law Institute (ALI) and he received the W&L Law Lewis Prize for Excellence in Legal Scholarship. In 2014-2015, he was recognized as the Ethan Allen Faculty Fellow for Scholarship. In 2012, Fairfield earned the Jessine Monaghan Faculty Fellowship for Teaching, and in 2010, he was recognized as the Huss Faculty Fellow for Law and Technology. In addition to numerous important publications over the years, Fairfield recently published a book with Cambridge University Press title “Owned: Property, Privacy and the New Digital Serfdom,” which has garnered praise from privacy law experts around the country and coverage in the mainstream media.

The Bain Family Professorship was established by W. Donald Bain, Jr. ’49L of Spartanburg, SC in honor of his father, William Donald Bain. A native of Rochelle, Ill., Don Bain came to the W&L School of Law after earning a B.S. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. He had a successful business career including more than 30 years at Moreland Chemical Co., where he rose to the rank of CEO. He merged Moreland with McKesson Corp. in San Francisco, eventually retiring as vice president and general manager of McKesson’s industrial chemical division.

A lifelong supporter of education, Bain has been particularly generous with W&L Law. In addition to this  professorship, Bain has supported the Steinheimer Professorship, the Class of 1949 Law Fellowship, the Law Library and the Law Annual Fund. He has been a participant or chair of numerous alumni chapter and reunion committees. For his dedicated service, Bain was awarded W&L’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1987 and inducted as an honorary member of Order of the Coif in 2007.

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