Professor of Law

Michael Korybut’s ability to teach and his enthusiasm for it are well recognized at the School of Law. Since joining the faculty in 1999, he has received the Best Teacher of the Year award twice.

“I’ve tried to create a methodology that recognizes each student learns differently,” he says. “I also tend to ground my teaching in problem solving. It’s important students understand law in action. And, it’s more fun to teach that way because it engages students. I absolutely love being in the classroom.”

Professor Korybut is equally enthusiastic about his scholarship. Intellectual stimulation was one of the main reasons he was attracted to academia. His principal research interest is secured transactions — foreclosure sales in particular.

“What fascinates me most is what creditors do when they repossess and sell collateral,” he says. “What is their methodology for identifying efficient markets and reasonable sale practices? Do they consult lawyers? Do they look at legal precedent? Do they go to the business community and ask, ‘How do you guys normally sell these goods?’ We don’t know because very little empirical investigation and writing has been done in this area. If we try to implement a law or policy about the most commercially reasonable way to sell repossessed goods, these would be good things to know.”

Professor Korybut’s 1999 Rutgers Law Journal article, “Online Auctions of Repossessed Collateral,” was one of the first to explore the use of the Internet as a marketplace for repossessed goods. “The Internet was experiencing a massive growth spurt and I wanted to examine the tensions between the law and this new medium of selling,” he says.

Following this article, Korybut published “Searching for Commercial Reasonableness under the Revised Article 9” in the Iowa Law Review (2002) and examined how secured creditors conduct foreclosure sales. “The article lays the foundation for empirical work I want to do concerning efficient resale markets and reasonable business practices,” he says.

His expertise in secured transactions developed while he was an associate attorney with Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe in San Francisco and with Gray, Cary, Ware and Friedenrich in Palo Alto, California. At both firms, he represented lending institutions and corporate borrowers.

Professor Korybut left private practice in 1996 to teach advanced legal research and writing at Stanford Law School and commercial law at Santa Clara University School of Law. He joined the Saint Louis University School of Law faculty in 1999.