Professor Emerita Susan Gary

Susan N. Gary has written and spoken about the use of purpose trusts as a new form of business ownership; the regulation of charities; and the application of fiduciary duties to the use of ESG information in investment decision making. She is Professor Emerita and formerly the Orlando J. and Marian H. Hollis Professor at the University of Oregon School of Law, where she taught courses in the law of trusts and estates, estate planning, and nonprofit organizations. In January-May 2025 she was the Cheng Yu Tung Visiting Professor at the University of Hong Kong, where she taught a graduate seminar on wealth management.

Gary received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. from Columbia University. Before entering academia, she practiced with Mayer, Brown & Platt in Chicago, and with DeBandt, van Hecke & Lagae in Brussels. She is a member of the American Law Institute and an Academic Fellow and former Regent of the American College of Trust and Estate Counsel, the preeminent U.S. organization for estate planning lawyers and academics. She has served on the Council of the Real Property, Trust and Estate Section of the American Bar Association and as the Reporter for three projects of the Uniform Law Commission: the Uniform Electronic Wills Act, the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, and the Model Protection of Charitable Assets Act. She has held leadership positions in three sections (trusts and estates, elder law, and nonprofits) of the Association of American Law Schools.