Professor Howard Meyers Answers the NYLS 10
Professor Howard S. Meyers is an expert in financial services law, corporate governance, and securities. As a member of the New York Law School faculty, he teaches courses in accounting, commercial law, and securities, in addition to his roles as director of both the School’s Center for Business and Financial Law and the Ronald H. Filler Institute for Financial Services Law. He is also Dean for Adjunct Faculty Engagement. Professor Meyers brings his career experience as a former certified public accountant and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) staff attorney investigating and litigating complex financial cases to share perspective and real-world impact with his students in the classroom. He has appeared as a guest legal commentator on CNBC, NBC Nightly News, MSNBC, BBC, and Fox News and is quoted frequently in the financial press.
Here, Professor Meyers answers the NYLS 10—10 questions about his work, his interests, and the things he looks forward to in the upcoming year.
1. What is the focus of your work?
I teach a number of courses including corporations, accounting, data analytics, and financial reporting for lawyers, as well as the securities arbitration specialized externship seminar. I'd like to think that in each of these courses I give students an appreciation of a discrete subject matter of the law, but more importantly help prepare them to enter practice and become excellent attorneys.
2. How have your interests changed over your career?
As a former SEC enforcement attorney, investor protection has always been a focus of mine, and while that hasn’t changed, it’s been fascinating to understand how that evolves as we’ve seen the financial markets moving more rapidly due to the dominance of algorithmic trading.
I’m also interested in examining the cultural shift we’re seeing where investing has become more gamified, as well as the rise of “finfluencers” who offer investment advice on platforms like Reddit, Discord, and even TikTok which shape how people, especially younger investors, engage with the financial market.
While it’s encouraging to see more young people interested in the financial markets and how they work, it raises important questions about the advice they’re receiving, especially advice that overstates the potential for increased, or even dramatic, returns and minimizes the risks involved.
More recently, I’ve found myself increasingly focused on how artificial intelligence will affect market function and integrity in the years ahead. There’s potential for innovation, but also new challenges when it comes to oversight.
3. How do people respond to your work?
I'd like to think they respond favorably! I enjoy meeting with students almost on a daily basis, both inside and outside the classroom, and discussing the various legal issues of the day. I also enjoy providing individualized career advice to my students. In fact, at the beginning of each semester, I collect the résumés of students in every class I teach. This helps me to get to know my students better—NYLS has a wonderful, diverse student body—and also assists me in helping to place students with jobs and connections that I have cultivated over the years.
Also, I feel that I bring different career path perspectives to students. I bring the perspective of working for the federal government from my former role as an SEC enforcement attorney, but I was also an associate at a Big Law firm and can share that perspective. Moreover, I started my own law practice specializing in securities and corporate law. I think those three different lanes make me well suited to providing career advice and helping students appreciate different career paths they may not have originally contemplated.
4. What’s a problem you wish you could solve with a snap of your fingers?
I thought about this question a lot, and I believe we’re better off if we don't simply accept things at face value and don't hesitate to ask questions, which is why I encourage my students to push back on judicial opinions that we read in class. I give the same advice to my students and my own children: think critically and come to your own conclusions, but don’t be intractable in your thinking. In fact, I think good listening goes hand in hand with critical thinking. Those are both important qualities that help us analyze and solve problems using the law as a tool to do so.
Professor Howard Meyers during office hours.
Professor Howard Meyers sharing advice with 1L students on an orientation panel.
Professor Howard Meyers teaching a Commercial Law course.
5. What questions do you have that you want to be able to answer with your work?
I’m particularly interested in answering how evolving corporate and securities laws impact everyday investors while also maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets and facilitating capital formation. Often there are some competing interests between the two, but they're not mutually exclusive. So that's on the top of my mind with ever-evolving securities products being offered to investors, changing market dynamics, and the push and pull of various securities regulations. I think these are important issues to consider.
6. How do you approach teaching law?
I love teaching and interacting with my students, and I approach each class with enthusiasm and energy. Learning should be fun! Corporate law, like many areas of the law, is extraordinarily complex and can feel intimidating to students who do not have a business background. I believe in having conversations with my students to make sure they feel engaged and comfortable asking questions. I suggest they approach every case they read as a short story—complete with main characters, drama, conflict, and an ultimate (although sometimes not satisfactory) resolution. I also provide discussion questions before each class to guide students’ reading and stimulate conversation. It is my job to equip students to think critically and come up with answers to questions they may face in the future by bulking up their reasoning muscles.
7. What are you excited about these days?
Well, I’m a lifelong Mets fan, so I certainly hope the team is heading toward the World Series and their first pennant since 1986, which I remember fondly. I’m also very much into my two labrador retrievers: a black lab named Walter and a yellow lab named Jesse, named after the lead characters on Breaking Bad, which my wife and I were big fans of. I am also an amateur magician. It’s been a hobby of mine since grade school, and I continue to work on new magic tricks, read about new techniques, and perform for friends and family—and occasionally students.
8. What’s the next year like for you?
As Dean of Adjunct Faculty Engagement, I’m continuing to engage with our adjunct faculty and help them with curricular design that’s impactful for our students, in addition to exploring new student externship and networking opportunities. I’m also the Director of NYLS’s Center for Business and Financial Law, so we continue to provide innovative programming for students who are interested in corporate and securities legal practice—and I’m very excited for the wonderful set of potential speakers we have on deck for the next year.
And I’m excited to continue to engage with NYLS alumni and my former students. For me, one of the most rewarding things is to hear from a former student who I may have taught five, six, or even 15 years ago, whether they’re on campus for another event and saying hi or reaching out to ask me if I know of any students that we could potentially place with them. I’m a big fan of paying it forward and I still keep in touch with many former students to this day.
9. Whose work excites you these days?
I enjoy reading biographies. I’m a big fan of Walter Isaacson, and I’ve read several of his works on Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, and Leonardo da Vinci, among others. I also recently finished an interesting book by Nate Silver called On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, which examines how venture capitalists and company founders think about and approach risk.
10. What are you reading, watching, or listening to?
As far as watching goes, I’m enjoying Severance and White Lotus, along with much of the rest of the population, it seems. Dark Winds is also a wonderful, very intriguing show following Native American law enforcement on a Navajo reservation in the 70s—I’m excited for the new season coming out. I recently read The Demon of Unrest, an Erik Larson book that discusses the five months between Lincoln’s election and the start of the Civil War, and How to Think Like a Magician, which talks about the creative process for developing magic tricks and the psychology of magic.
As for listening, I have found myself listening to more U2 and their album “The Joshua Tree” after a wonderful visit to Joshua Tree National Park with my wife for our 25th wedding anniversary.