Zachary L. Henderson

Zachary Henderson joined SMU Dedman School of Law as an Assistant Professor of Law in fall 2026. Professor Henderson’s interests and scholarship engage with the tangled relationship between law and innovation, with special attention paid to emerging technologies like AI. His work and thinking also frequently implicates administrative law, national security law, health law, and law & economics. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston College Law Review, Wisconsin Law Review, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, and elsewhere, and has been cited by state supreme courts, federal district and circuit courts, and in briefs to the United States Supreme Court.

Before joining SMU, Professor Henderson was a Visiting Assistant Professor at The University of California College of Law, San Francisco, where he was also appointed the Shashi and Dipanjan “DJ” Deb Faculty Scholar, and helped direct the law school’s Center for Innovation, as well as its AI & Innovation Institute. Prior to transitioning to academia, Professor Henderson served as general counsel to venture-backed health technology companies; worked at Kirkland & Ellis as a litigator in the firm’s Chicago office; and clerked for two years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

Professor Henderson remains active in law-and-technology communities within the private sector, where he routinely consults for innovative startups on their most challenging regulatory matters. He also co-hosts The A to Z of AI Podcast, on which he interviews C-level executives on how they and their companies are building with and using artificial intelligence.