Mr. Neth joined the faculty in 1970 after four years of practice in Boston. He teaches Contracts and courses in commercial law, products liability, and dispute resolution. After spending a semester at Stanford University as an IBM Law and Computer Fellow, he founded and chaired the AALS Section on Law and Computers, and he was partly responsible for this law school's pioneering installation of LEXIS and the incorporation of computerized research into the curriculum.

Students are important here. Without their hard work and enthusiasm classes would not be so interesting or productive. I am constantly learning from my students. The idea for my most recently published article ("The First to File Priority in Article 9: Can You Sell Your Place in Line?," Uniform Commercial Code Law Journal .... 1998) came out of a student question in class. A student asked, if the priority rules say this, is it legal to do that? I had never thought of the question before but thought I knew the answer. However, after thinking it over I discovered that my initial answer was probably wrong, and that no one had ever written about the issue. The resulting article, I think, might have considerable practical importance.

The article which I currently am trying to finish also derives directly from my class room teaching. In both my contracts and commercial law classes I urge the students to analyze cases one issue at a time, and not to fudge them together. This is a part of what it means to think like a lawyer. In trying to explain the importance of this, I came to the realization of why the awards issued by arbitrators often give the appearance of compromise. Out of this, came my forthcoming “Arbitration as Compromise.”