AccessLex Institute^® Board Directors Re-Elected

Bridget M. McCormack joined the AccessLex Board in 2024. She is the President and CEO of the American Arbitration Association-International Centre for Dispute Resolution^® (AAA-ICDR^®). Before her tenure at AAA-ICDR, McCormack served as the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court from 2019 to 2022 after being an associate justice since 2013.

An esteemed educator at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, McCormack has also been instrumental in exploring the implications of artificial intelligence in the legal sector and advocating for responsible AI practices within the profession. She has played a pivotal role in modernizing legal education as a chair of the American Bar Association’s Section on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar and through her involvement on key legal education and reform committees.

McCormack has earned numerous awards, including the Sunshine Award from the Michigan Press Association for promoting transparency in public service and the Rebuilding Justice Award, acknowledging her dedication to legal reform.

She is a graduate of Trinity College and New York University Law School, where she was a Root-Tilden Scholar.

Maureen A. O’Rourke joined the Board in 2015 and is the Associate Provost for Faculty Affairs at Boston University. O’Rourke is a member of the faculty of Boston University School of Law and served there as Interim Dean from 2004-2006, then Dean until 2018. Before her roles at Boston University, she worked at IBM Corporation, where she handled a variety of issues surrounding software licensing.

O’Rourke is a member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Board of Trustees of Marist College. She has served on the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education including as Chair and is a past-Chair of the AALS Section on the Law School Dean and the Section on Computers and the Law.

O’Rourke is a graduate of Yale Law School and earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Marist College. She is a co-author of one of the leading copyright casebooks in the U.S., Copyright in a Global Information Economy (Wolters Kluwer), and has written extensively on the intersection of intellectual property law with other fields, particularly contract law. She is also a recipient of the Metcalf Award, Boston University’s highest teaching honor.

Austen L. Parrish joined the Board in 2015, and he is the third Dean at University California, Irvine School of Law. Before joining UCI Law, he served as the Dean and James H. Rudy Professor of Law at the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University Bloomington from January 2014 to June 2022. Before joining Indiana University Bloomington, he served as the Irwin R. Buchalter Professor of Law, Vice Dean and interim Dean and CEO at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles.

Dean Parrish is active in a number of national organizations focused on legal education. He is an elected member of the American Law Institute and a member of the Fellows of the American Bar Foundation. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Association of American Law Schools. He is also a member of the AALS Deans Steering Committee (2019-2022), Chair of the AALS Audit & Investment Policy Committee, and a member of the Budget Committee and the Nominating Committee for the Deans Steering Committee (2022).

Dean Parrish received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and his law degree from Columbia University, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone scholar. His research and scholarship is focused on transnational and international law, with a particular expertise in legal and policy issues related to the extraterritorial application of domestic law.