1. Faculty Profile: Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett

Faculty Profile: Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett joined W&L Law in the fall of 2023. In his research, he studies the legal contours and practical effects of modern consumer and employment contracts.

By Law Communications
November 14, 2024

Alexi Pfeffer-Gillett joined W&L Law in the fall of 2023 as an assistant professor of law. He teaches Civil Procedure and a Consumer Protection Law seminar, among other classes, and in his research, he studies the legal contours and practical effects of modern consumer and employment contracts.

Originally from Baltimore, Pfeffer-Gillett graduated from the University of Virginia with an English degree, after which he spent two years working in Washington, D.C. with the American Federation of Teachers. His work there focused on hospital and charter-school operations as part of nurse- and teacher-organizing campaigns and gave rise to a greater interest in public policy, leading him to pursue a master's degree at Brown University with a focus on education policy. That degree ultimately led him to pursue legal studies. "My main reason for going to law school was to explore how the law shapes and responds to policy," he said. "That resonated with me the most and was an area where I felt like I could have the greatest impact." He began his studies at the UC Irvine Law, transferring after his first year to Berkely Law, where he completed his J.D.

Law school was an intellectually stimulating period for Pfeffer-Gillett, who found a particular interest in civil procedure, a subject that would become a cornerstone of his academic career. "Law school was everything that I hoped it would be. It was intellectually challenging, and I found the classes to be really thought provoking," he said. As the child of parents with teaching backgrounds, Pfeffer-Gillett always suspected teaching might be in his own future, and it was during his first year of law school that he seriously considered legal academia as a career path. He cited his civil procedure professor as a significant influence who mentored him and helped him lay out a timeline for the steps he would need to take to achieve his academic goals.

After graduating from law school, Pfeffer-Gillett clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then spent nearly four years practicing at a plaintiff-side securities litigation firm, gaining hands-on experience in a variety of high-stakes cases. His work there included litigating cases that emerged from the 2008 subprime-mortgage crisis and addressing fraud issues involving companies across an array of industries. While his experiences in practice were valuable, Pfeffer-Gillett maintained a desire to pursue academia, where he could be more self-directed in his research and writing. He took a position as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Maryland, where he first taught legal writing and advocacy, then torts and property in his second year, before moving into a tenure-track position at W&L Law.

In his current role, Pfeffer-Gillett teaches courses in civil procedure and consumer protection, areas closely tied to his research, which focuses on arbitration and its intersection with employment and consumer rights. To explain the challenges consumers face, especially in the digital age, he shared a personal example illustrating his concerns with mandatory-arbitration clauses in consumer contracts. "I received a notification from Roku on my television that in order to to keep using the television, I had to agree to updated Terms of Service…which imposed new arbitration requirements on consumers." Noting the lack of negotiation and understanding involved in such agreements, Pfeffer-Gillett explained that for most consumers, "your only negotiating power is to throw away your television." Instead, Pfeffer-Gillet and students in his Consumer Protection class drafted and mailed letters to Roku opting out of the company's arbitration terms (and imposing a few new terms on Roku as a condition of the company continuing to collect and profit from data obtained through their devices).

His research in arbitration law addresses the fairness of these agreements, which he explains are often presented in boilerplate terms with limited options for consumers. His recent article, "Unfair by Default: Arbitration's Reverse Default Judgment Problem" published in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review, discusses the filing-fee structure in arbitration cases and how the burden often falls unfairly on consumers if the opposing company fails to pay its fee. "If the company doesn't pay its filing fee, then you have to pay the company's filing fee also, or else you can't arbitrate the claim," Pfeffer-Gillett explained. This unfairness, he notes, contrasts sharply with civil litigation, where a defendant-company that fails to comply with procedural rules faces consequences like default rather than shifting the burden back to the consumer.

In addition to teaching and research, Pfeffer-Gillett is active in public advocacy related to his field. Over the past year, he has written two amicus briefs supporting plaintiffs' rights in mass-arbitration cases, an alternative to class action lawsuits in which individuals file thousands of simultaneous claims against a company. This tactic, which has become more common as companies seek to enforce arbitration clauses to avoid class actions, is "a way for consumers to apply pressure on companies by taking advantage of the way arbitration rules operate, in the same way that companies have been taking advantage of the rules for decades."

Now in his second year at W&L Law, Pfeffer-Gillett said he appreciates his students' curiosity and thoughtfulness about law as well as their commitment to the community. "The students here really want to build a relationship with their professors," he says. "They aren't just here to pass exams; they're interested in discussing issues beyond the classroom-career goals, work-life balance, and what kind of lawyer they want to be." Pfeffer-Gillett greatly enjoys these conversations with students and is of course also always happy to answer exam-related questions.

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