James Stone is a Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago. His research explores access to justice from the ground up. Some of his scholarship focuses on practical and structural impediments to litigation faced by unpopular or under-resourced litigants. In other work, he explores the broader structuring of our legal system and legal-services markets, and how those markets fail those with legal needs. Recent work in this area includes an exploration of the protectionist origins of restrictions on the unauthorized practice of law and nonlawyer ownership of law firms, and an account of how those rules reduce the availability of legal help. As a composer and fiction writer, James tries to platform compelling stories in all this work. His scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal and the Washington University Law Review, and his work has been featured by various platforms, including Above the Law, the Cato Institute, Mother Jones, and the “Excited Utterance” podcast. 

Before joining the Law School, James clerked for Jane L. Kelly of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit and Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of the Northern District of Illinois. 

James holds a JD from Stanford Law School, a PhD in music composition from UC Berkeley, and a BA from the University of Chicago.