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Jeffrey O'Connell is The Samuel H. McCoy, II Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, specializing in accident and insurance law. He is the co-author of the principal work which proposed no-fault auto insurance. Prior to teaching at Virginia, he taught law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. A native of Worcester, Mass. he is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Dartmouth College (Phi Beta Kappa), and the Harvard Law School. He also has taught law at the University of Iowa, and as a visiting professor at Northwestern, the University of Michigan, Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas (Austin), and the University of Washington (Seattle). O'Connell, while a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, also taught at Oxford University, U.K. He was also a recipient of a second Guggenheim Fellowship, serving as the Thomas Jefferson Visiting Fellow at Downing College, Cambridge University, U.K.. He has been awarded a Convocation Medal for his published research on reform of medical malpractice law by the American College of Cardiology. He has served as the John Marshall Harlan Visiting Distinguished Professor at New York Law School and was the recipient of the Robert B. McKay Award of the American Bar Association for outstanding scholarly contributions to tort and insurance law. In December 1999, the publication "The American Lawyer" listed O'Connell as likely to be viewed as one of "The Lawyers of the Century" based on his work reforming tort law. Prior to teaching law, he practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts, as a trial lawyer with the firm of Hale & Dorr. He is a member of the Virginia and Massachusetts Bars, as well as an honorary member of the Arkansas and Minnesota Bars. O'Connell is the author or co-author of fourteen books mostly dealing with accident law; his latest one from Carolina Academic Press, co-authored with Christopher Robinette, is entitled "A Recipe for Balanced Tort Reform: Early Offers with Swift Settlements" (2008). O'Connell has also written extensively for numerous popular, legal and insurance journals including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Harvard Law Review. He has also lectured on insurance matters throughout the world. He has held a Presidential appointment as a member of the National Highway Safety Advisory Committee to the U. S. Department of Transportation. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports and has served on the Educational Advisory Board of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, grantor of Guggenheim Fellowships, and on the Medical and Safety Committee of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). A widower, he was married to the former Virginia A. Kearns of New York City; he has a grown son and daughter.
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