This Article is the first to analyze an unexplored but critical change in how modern banks are governed: the rise of lawyers as bank directors. That rise has been precipitous, raising the question of why lawyer-directors now sit on most bank boards. Using novel empirical evidence, we show that...

In the lead up to the 2007–2008 financial crisis, U.S. banks engaged in systemic, excessive risk taking that drove the economy to the verge of collapse. This Article makes three contributions to understanding how this pandemic of excessive bank risk taking was possible and which policy reforms...