Ryan McCarl is a founding partner of Rushing McCarl LLP, author of the forthcoming book Elegant Legal Writing (U. Cal. Press 2024), and adjunct professor of Legal Drafting at LMU Loyola Law School. Previously, he was a Fellow in Artificial Intelligence Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, where he taught Advanced Legal Writing and researched the use of artificial intelligence in the legal profession. He has given legal writing seminars to audiences including the State of Texas Office of the Attorney General.
Before joining the UCLA Law faculty and co-founding Rushing McCarl LLP, Mr. McCarl clerked for the Honorable David M. Ebel on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, worked as a litigator at WilmerHale and Hueston Hennigan, and founded the educational technology startup WordBrewery.
Mr. McCarl has drafted briefs and motions in cases before state and federal trial and appellate courts, including the United States Supreme Court. His expertise in legal writing and strategy helps clients develop innovative and successful arguments in complex disputes.
Mr. McCarl has published articles and book chapters on diverse topics including artificial intelligence and law, substantive due process, claim preclusion, constitutional vagueness doctrine, sovereign debt arbitration, and property rights. His writings have appeared in the Cincinnati Law Review, Stanford Journal of International Law, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Real Estate Law Journal, Daily Journal, and elsewhere.
Mr. McCarl earned his J.D. with Honors from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was a member of the Chicago Journal of International Law. He earned an M.A. in International Relations and B.A. in Political Science at the University of Chicago, where he was a captain of the track team and broke the school record in cross country. He also earned an M.A. in Education at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and taught high school history and geography.
Mr. McCarl is admitted to practice in California as well as the District of Columbia (inactive), before the United States Courts of Appeals for the Third, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits, and before numerous United States District Courts.
Selected publications and talks
- Elegant Legal Writing (blog, email newsletter, and forthcoming book)
- Second Stage (blog and email newsletter)
- The Limits of Law and AI, 90 U. Cin. L. Rev. (2022)
- Writing Elite Briefs and Motions (CLE prepared for the State of Texas Office of the Attorney General in April 2022)
- Legal Writing Fundamentals
- Artificial Intelligence 101 for Lawyers
- Business Property Insurance May Cover COVID-19-related Losses, Daily Journal (2020)
- AI Without Math: Making AI And ML Comprehensible, AI Pulse (2019)
- Claim Preclusion Across Jurisdictions: Navigating the Labyrinth, Daily Journal (2019)
- ICSID Jurisdiction Over International Mass Investment Arbitrations: Due Process and Default Rules, 51 Stan. J. Int’l L. 173 (2015)
- When Homeowners Associations Go Too Far: Political Responses to Unpopular Rules in Common Interest Communities, 43 Real Estate L.J. 453 (2015)
- Incoherent and Indefensible: An Interdisciplinary Critique of the Supreme Court’s Void-for-Vagueness Doctrine, 42 Hastings Const. L.Q. 73 (2014)
- Creditors’ remedies, Sovereign Debt Management (with Mark Weidemaier) (Oxford Univ. Press 2014)