Professor Michael J. Cedrone’s teaching and scholarship are rooted in the belief that professional identity is formed when law students must reason, act, and reflect as lawyers do. In his first year Legal Practice course, students learn to research, analyze, and advocate orally and in writing through rich simulations involving complex facts and law. In his innovative Week One class, students represent clients dealing with a possible Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violation that comes to light during an international corporate acquisition. Students gather facts through interviewing a witness, report to the General Counsel of their corporate client (a role played by many of Georgetown’s most prominent alums), and renegotiate terms of the deal to account for the risks of an FCPA prosecution. Finally, he teaches the Intro to United States Legal Systems course in Georgetown’s LLM program.

Cedrone has explored the formation of young lawyers’ professional identity in his law review article, The Developmental Path of the Lawyer, and he has frequently presented on these topics for the Legal Writing Institute and the Association of Legal Writing Directors. He lectures for Themis Bar Review and the International Law Institute, and he has conducted writing workshops for federal employees.
Professor Cedrone joined the Georgetown Law faculty in 2008 following a federal District Court clerkship and four years of practice at the Boston firm Peabody &Arnold, LLP. From 2005-07, he taught legal research and writing as an adjunct professor at Boston University School of Law and served as pro bono counsel for the Massachusetts Board of Bar Examiners, grading Massachusetts Bar Exam and representing the Board at a character and fitness hearing for an applicant to the Massachusetts bar. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown Law and Harvard College. Prior to law school, Cedrone taught for five years in the Massachusetts public schools and earned a master’s degree in education from Boston University.