Professor Lars S. Smith holds the Samuel J. Stallings Chair in Law at Brandeis Law. He teaches intellectual property, business and commercial law, with courses that include trademark law, business planning, property, secured transactions and law and economics. He is particularly committed to developing practice-ready graduates and incorporates skills-based exercises into his teaching.

Professor Smith has received several honors for his teaching and scholarship. In 2012, he earned the University of Louisville Distinguished Faculty Award in Teaching. In 2011, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to teach at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law in Wuhan, China, where he taught U.S. intellectual property law to Chinese master of laws students. He also served as the founding interim director of the law school’s first clinic and is faculty advisor to the Entrepreneurship Clinic.

His scholarship explores the intersection of intellectual property, commercial law and technology. His article “Trade Distinctiveness: Solving Scalia’s Tertium Quid Trade Dress Conundrum” was selected by the Intellectual Property Law Review as one of the year’s top intellectual property articles in 2006. He has published widely on emerging issues such as cloud computing and RFID technology, co-authoring “RFID in the Supply Chain: Panacea or Pandora’s Box?” with Dr. Brian L. Dos Santos. His book Mastering Trademark and Unfair Competition Law, co-authored with Professor Llewellyn Gibbons of the University of Toledo, was first published by Carolina Academic Press in 2013, with a second edition released in 2024.

Before joining the Brandeis Law faculty, Professor Smith practiced as a corporate and intellectual property lawyer in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.