Walter Olson

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. Prior to joining Cato, Olson was a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and has been a columnist for Great Britain's Times Online as well as Reason. His writing appears regularly in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the New York Post. He has appeared numerous times before Congress and advised many public officials. The Washington Post has dubbed him the "intellectual guru of tort reform." His approximately 400 broadcast appearances include all the major networks, CNN, Fox News, PBS, NPR, and "Oprah". Olson's most recent book, Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter Books), appeared in 2011 and was described by Publisher's Weekly as "cutting-edge commentary," "astute," "witty" and "hard-hitting." His previous book on mass litigation, The Rule of Lawyers, was hailed in leading publications including Forbes, The American Lawyer, and Barron's. The Excuse Factory, his 1997 book on lawsuits in the workplace, was met with accolades in the London Times and the A.B.A. Journal. Olson's widely discussed first book, The Litigation Explosion, was cited by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in a major Supreme Court case. On the web, he founded and continues to run Overlawyered.com, widely cited as the oldest blog on law as well as one of the most popular.