Andy Kaufman, Class of 1974
After graduating from Yale with a degree in English, Andy Kaufman came to Vanderbilt Law School to study law and to experience life outside of New England. “I grew up in Boston and then went to Yale,” Kaufman recalls. “But jobs were leaving New England in droves in the early 1970s, and my sense was, if I had any interest in exploring the world, there was a lot to explore beyond the narrow confines of the Northeast.”
At Vanderbilt, Kaufman developed an interest in business and transaction law and served as editor-in-chief of the Law Review. “That opened a lot of doors,” he says.
Now an expert in financing and secured transactions, Kaufman teaches Secured Transactions and a short course, Realities of Commercial Lending, as an adjunct professor on Vanderbilt’s law faculty, commuting to Nashville each week from Chicago, where he is a partner with Kirkland & Ellis.
Over the course of his career, Kaufman says, “The basic principles of commercial law haven’t fundamentally changed, but transactions have become more sophisticated and complex, and things move at a much faster pace. Much of the evolution in the applicable law has resulted from the need to adapt to an increasingly service- and information-based economy from the traditional manufacturing-based economy upon which our commercial law principles had been established.”
He advises young lawyers to remain flexible. “Flexibility is one of the keys to success,” he says. “The common thread of my practice has been commercial law, but I’ve dealt regularly with mergers and acquisitions, general corporate matters, securities law, real estate finance, bankruptcy and business transactions and regulations are becoming increasingly complex.”
