“We are thrilled to welcome Professors Paul Connell, Jason Reinecke and Benjamin Sobel, who are poised to advance UW Law’s leadership in the rapidly evolving fields of AI and innovation,” said BJ Ard, associate dean for research and faculty development. “These exceptional scholars ensure UW Law’s place at the forefront of meeting the complex challenges and opportunities raised by AI, complementing our existing core of faculty leaders in IP, science and technology law.”
Their expertise in AI and technology innovation is also crucial as UW Law joins in the university’s commitment to accelerate growth, research and interdisciplinary partnerships across campus through RISE-AI, part of Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s Wisconsin Research, Innovation and Scholarly Excellence (RISE) Initiative. It’s designed to help address significant, complex challenges of importance to Wisconsin and the world through accelerated and strategic faculty hiring, research infrastructure enhancement, interdisciplinary collaboration and increased student and educational opportunities.
Learn more about the Wisconsin RISE Initiative at rise.wisc.edu.
Not Just What We Know, But How: Paul Connell on AI, Curiosity and Real-World Impact
Paul Connell’s scholarship is unique and multidisciplinary; and it’s rooted in the Law-in-Action tradition.
Connell, who recently joined UW Law School as an assistant professor, explores the intersection of law, economics and AI to improve how we understand and implement legal systems. Using AI, he analyzes data to rethink how we produce and trust that legal knowledge.
“One thing I think is fascinating is how AI is going to affect not just what we know but how we know what we know,” he explained. “There’s a methodological aspect to AI that I’m particularly drawn to, especially with regard to how it will affect the practice of social science and the study of law. There’s so much text as a product of law or as historical documents that can be accessed on a much broader scale than we used to be able to. But the precise mechanics of how AI works are important for understanding what we’re actually looking at once an AI parses that data.”
In his dissertation, Connell, who received his Ph.D. from Columbia University, studied econometric issues raised by the use of AI data in statistical analysis and deployed AI to unlock data for empirical research on securities markets and patenting dynamics.
“I find this subject matter compelling due to the real-world impact it might have,” he explained. “Much of corporate law and securities regulation is important because there’s so much money at stake that even small changes in the rules can make a big difference in market outcomes. So, it’s extra important to get the rules right.”
Connell is drawn to UW Law’s multidisciplinary approach to scholarship, which aligns with his blend of academic training and experience as a legal practitioner. Before pursuing economics in graduate school, he worked in Capital Markets at Davis Polk and on the Equity Derivatives team at J.P. Morgan.
“One of the things I’ve always felt is that law doesn’t occur in a vacuum,” he said. “In order to really understand it, you have to get the social context that generated it and the society it’s being used in.”
To that end, Connell said it’s helpful to have a vantage point that’s not solely legal; it could be an economics or historical standpoint, or something else.
“The law is a starting point and then there’s bargaining after that, with all the industry-specific norms that that entails,” he added.
Connell hopes his students learn about more than just what’s on the syllabus in his classes.
“A career in law is one of constant learning,” he said. “The most important skill you can take away from law school is being able to teach yourself new things. There’s always going to be new areas of law that are too specific or in the weeds for a law school class to capture. The law is also constantly evolving, so to stay current, you have to always be teaching yourself.”
That’s easier when you’re genuinely curious about the subject, he added — and curiosity thrives when you have something that drives you.
“Maybe it’s a subject-matter interest, a commitment to equitable social ordering or simply a desire to help someone,” he said. “Finding that ‘why’ is important to launching a career in law, and I hope I can help inspire that in my students. Even — maybe especially — if it’s something as wonky as how AI might mediate information asymmetries in financial markets.”
Jason Reinecke, Coming Home: A Family Tradition, Revisited
For as long as he can remember, Jason Reinecke wanted to be a Badger.
He grew up in nearby Verona, and his family had strong ties to the university, with six of them — his father, mother, grandfather, aunt, uncle and cousin — all having graduated from UW Law School. His father, Dave Reinecke, also taught as an adjunct at the Law School for nearly a decade. (Among other courses, he taught trusts and estates.) Reinecke, who joined the Law School faculty as an assistant professor of law this fall, will be teaching the same class in Spring 2026.
“My family raved about their experiences at UW Law,” said Reinecke.
His dream to be a Badger came true when he was admitted to the undergraduate program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering.
After graduating from UW, Reinecke attended Stanford Law School. He went on to work as a patent litigation attorney at Covington & Burling LLP, and to clerk for then-Chief Judge Sharon Prost on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. He then returned to Stanford to serve as an intellectual property research fellow.
While he enjoyed his time on both coasts, his heart remained in Wisconsin. His wish to return to the Badger State came true when he joined Marquette University Law School as an assistant professor of law. While he really enjoyed his time at Marquette, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to head home and re-join his alma mater.
“It is great to be an active part of the University of Wisconsin again,” he said.
Reinecke’s scholarship focuses on intellectual property law and innovation, with an emphasis on patent law. It’s an area of interest spurred by his time as an undergrad.
“A couple friends and I came up with an invention and were thinking about forming a startup,” he explained. “When we started looking into how we could monetize our invention, we participated in an innovation competition hosted by the university. We also looked into obtaining a patent. This experience got me thinking about different innovation policy levers (e.g., patents and competitions) and how they compared.”
This intersection of law and innovation is an area that’s especially important today, Reinecke said.
“Innovation is the leading driver of economic growth and increased living standards and well-being,” he explained. “Innovation is what brings us new life-saving drugs, safer vehicles and better generative AI tools, among many other things. Legal policy levers, such as patents and tax incentives, are tools that we use to incentivize innovation. It’s thus really important to tailor these legal policy levers as best as possible. Even small improvements to the law can, for example, save countless lives.”
Reinecke’s background in both practice and academia shapes the questions he pursues. It also impacts his teaching.
“In practice, I learned that courts don’t always say what they mean or mean what they say,” he explained. “Lawyers have to learn to read between the lines to figure out what’s really driving judicial decisions. In my classes, I try to help students learn this important skill.”
Reinecke said he’s a “big believer that law school education should prepare students for legal practice.”
That’s why he’s no stranger to sharing his experiences as a clerk for the Federal Circuit or his time as a practicing litigator with his students.
“I learned several lessons — usually the ‘hard way,’” he said. “I saw firsthand where practitioners are most likely to slip up. I like to discuss those with my students so that they’ll be more prepared than I was.”
Reinecke said he’s “honored and privileged” to join UW Law School.
“It’s an incredible school that is committed to providing an excellent legal education,” he said. “It’s difficult to describe in words how great it is to be back in Madison. So much has stayed the same. I’ve missed so many things, including Badger games, the Terrace, Ian’s Pizza, Mickie’s Dairy Bar and much more. I’m excited to have another opportunity to explore all that campus has to offer.”
Benjamin Sobel: On Communication and Meaning
Benjamin Sobel’s interest in copyright law came from his decades-long love of music … and a 2008 book.
Sobel, who joined UW Law School as an assistant professor this fall, plays jazz saxophone or other instruments almost every day. For his Harvard College placement test, he needed to write an essay based on text from Harvard Law Professor Jonathan Zittrain’s “The Future of the Internet—And How to Stop It.”
“I read the excerpt and was totally hooked,” Sobel said. “At that time, I was seriously interested in music and literature, and I could see how new technologies were changing the way these art forms were created and disseminated. These changes were raising lots of hard questions: Whose creativity is encouraged, and whose gets discouraged? Who gets to control what others can create? Who pays, and who profits? Technology law looked to me like it was where those hard questions got hashed out.”
Sobel was so hooked, in fact, that he asked Zittrain for a research assistant job as a sophomore. He got the position.
“I owe my career to that early, and very gracious, vote of confidence,” he said, adding, “and, of course, to the support I received from many other generous mentors as well. It didn’t take long after that for me to set my sights on a career in legal academia.”
After attending Harvard Law School, Sobel sought “practical immersion” by clerking for Chief Judge David Barron and the late Judge Michael Boudin on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, and for Judge Pierre Leval on the Second Circuit.
“I couldn’t have asked for better mentors,” he said. “Clerking for these truly outstanding judges was an education not just in how the legal system works, but in how to be a judicious person and how to support younger generations of professionals.”
Most recently, Sobel was a postdoctoral fellow at the Digital Life Initiative at Cornell Tech and an affiliate scholar at New York University’s Information Law Institute. This time allowed him to pursue his tech-law scholarship in an interdisciplinary environment, in dialogue with computer scientists, information scientists, lawyers and philosophers. It also prepared him for his role at UW Law.
Sobel was drawn in part to Madison because his parents have spoken fondly of their time living here before he was born. (They even got married in the Capitol!)
His parents — Kathryn Woolard, a linguistic anthropologist who worked in Educational Policy Studies during her time at UW, and Joel Sobel, a game theorist — are profound academic influences.
“We obviously work in quite different disciplines, but we’re all converging on similar questions about communication and meaning,” he explained. “For instance, one of my newest papers uses semiotic theory to analyze the legal status of nonconsensual, AI-generated deepfakes. It may sound a little esoteric, but semiotics turns out to offer a clear way of explaining some of the regulatory challenges that deepfakes present. I never could have written that paper if it hadn’t been for my mother’s influence and expertise.”
Sobel, who will be teaching copyright and property law this academic year, said the legal problems he studies tend to involve disputes about what information means, because technological advances transform how we communicate and how we interpret things.
“Fundamentally, today’s novel communication technologies are changing and mediating how we interpret information,” he said. “In the time of generative AI, for instance, it’s no longer safe to assume that an image that looks like a photograph is in fact a photograph, nor is it safe to assume that lucid and persuasive text was written by a human author who reasoned through it word by word. These changes aren’t necessarily good or bad — but they are changes, and they affect the legal significance of the information that we are constantly producing and receiving.”
By Kassandra Tuten and Jennie Broecker