Lily Batchelder

Lily Batchelder is a Professor of Law at the New York University Law School, where she specializes in taxation with a particular emphasis on income taxation, wealth transfer taxation, tax incentives, and social insurance. Her research centers on the efficient design of tax incentives, distributional effects of wealth transfer taxes, and intersections between tax and social policy in addressing economic insecurity, income disparities, and barriers to intergenerational mobility. Apart from her academic work, Batchelder advises policymakers, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations on policy matters, and has testified several times before Congress. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, and is currently the Co-Director of the Furman Academic Program and an Affiliated Scholar with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Batchelder joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2005 from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, where she focused on transactional and tax policy matters. She was promoted to associate professor in 2007, and professor in 2008. Previously she served as a Wiener Fellow at the Wiener Center on Social Policy at the Kennedy School of Government; Director of Community Affairs and Campaign Manager for a New York state senator; and Client Advocate for a small social services organization in Ocean Hill-Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Batchelder received her A.B. in Political Science with honors and distinction from Stanford University, where she received a Firestone Medal for Excellence in Undergraduate Research. She received her M.P.P. in Microeconomics and Human Services from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, where she was a Kennedy Fellow and President of the Kennedy School Student Government. She earned her J.D. from Yale Law School, where she was twice awarded the Clifford L. Porter Prize for Best Paper on Taxation. While there, she was founder and director of the Pro Bono Network, executive editor of the Yale Human Rights & Development Law Journal, director of the Lowenstein International Human Rights Project, and an editor of the Yale Law Journal.