Professor Adam S. Zimmerman

Adam Zimmerman is a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, where he teaches Tort Law, Administrative Law, Mass Tort Law, and Complex Litigation. Professor Zimmerman's teaching methods have been featured in the national news media. He was named Best New Law Professor in 2011 and has been named "Professor of the Year" by student organizations in 2013 and 2022. 

Professor Zimmerman’s scholarship explores the way class action attorneys, regulatory agencies and criminal prosecutors provide justice to large groups of people through overlapping systems of tort law, administrative law and criminal law. His recent articles have been accepted for publication in the Chicago Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Duke Law Journal, New York University Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Texas Law Review, Virginia Law Review, and the Yale Law Journal. In 2016, the federal government adopted Zimmerman’s recommendations to permit class actions in administrative hearings based on findings that appear in his article Inside the Agency Class Action, 126 Yale L.J 1634 (2017). His most recent article, Ghostwriting Federalism, 133 Yale L. J. _ (forthcoming 2024), charts the long-unexamined ways that federal agencies draft state legislation and assesses how they can improve group participation and experimentation in our federal system of government.

Professor Zimmerman graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law, where he served as Associate Editor of the Georgetown Law Journal and co-founded the first student chapter of the American Constitutional Society in the country. After graduation, he clerked for Judge Jack B. Weinstein in the Eastern District of New York. He then served as counsel to Special Master Kenneth R. Feinberg in the design and administration of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund. Afterwards, he was associated with Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP, where he represented clients in complex commercial litigation and mass tort cases, as well as domestic and international arbitration.