Professor Hilary J. Allen joined the American University Washington College of Law faculty in 2018. She previously held appointments at Suffolk University Law School and Loyola New Orleans College of Law, and has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Sydney (Australia), UC Davis School of Law and Brooklyn Law School. She teaches courses in Banking Law, Securities Regulation, Financial Regulation, Corporate Finance and Business Associations, and has also taught classes on international and comparative financial regulation in Austria and Brazil.
Professor Allen is a nationally recognized expert on financial stability regulation, having testified before the House Financial Services Committee and authored more than 15 law review articles on the subject (recent articles have appeared in the Boston College Law Review, the George Washington Law Review, and the Harvard Business Law Review).
In her work, she stresses the importance of financial stability by underlining the human consequences of financial crises, and considers a variety of existing and evolving threats to financial stability. Her recent work has focused on threats arising from climate change and the increasing prevalence of fintech (she has authored a book “Driverless Finance: Fintech’s Impact on Financial Stability”, which is forthcoming from Oxford University Press). Professor Allen is also actively involved in presenting scholarly publications at roundtables and conferences, and regularly contributes blog posts and podcasts on the subject of financial regulation.
Professor Allen received her Bachelor of Laws from the University of Sydney, Australia, and her Master of Laws in Securities and Financial Regulation Law from Georgetown University Law Center (for which she received the Thomas Bradbury Chetwood, S.J. Plaque for graduating first in her class). Prior to entering the academy, Professor Allen spent seven years working in the financial services groups of prominent law firms in London, Sydney and New York (most recently at Shearman & Sterling LLP in New York). In 2010, she worked with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was appointed by Congress to study the causes of the financial crisis of 2007-2008.