Richard Bierschbach

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Richard A. Bierschbach is the dean of Wayne State University Law School and the university’s interim president. He became Wayne Law’s 12th dean on August 17, 2017, and has served as interim president since September 17, 2025, after the resignation of Kimberly Andrews Espy.

Born in Michigan, Bierschbach earned a BA in history (summa cum laude) and a JD from the University of Michigan. He won the Daniel H. Grady Prize for graduating first in his class and the Henry M. Bates Award, the law school’s top honor.

Before joining Wayne State, he taught at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York, where he also served as vice dean. He has held prestigious clerkships, including for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge A. Raymond Randolph (1997–98) and for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (2000–01). He was a Bristow Fellow in the Department of Justice’s Office of the Solicitor General and an attorney-advisor in the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Bierschbach has worked in the New York offices of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, focusing on Supreme Court and appellate litigation. His teaching and research cover criminal law and procedure, administrative and regulatory law, and corporate crime, especially white-collar and regulatory offenses. His work appears in leading law journals, and he twice won Cardozo’s Best Professor Award.

He has held leadership roles in the American Bar Association, is an elected member of the American Law Institute, and a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. He and his wife Carina have two children.