Sung Eun (Summer) Kim
Expertise:
Corporate law, corporate finance, financial regulation, contracts
Background:
Summer Kim is Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law. Professor Kim’s primary research and teaching interests are in corporate law, corporate social responsibility, corporate governance, financial regulation and contracts. Her scholarship examines how legal and market structures create and deepen inequities in our society, and her work aims to close these gaps.
Professor Kim is a co-author (with Professor Cynthia Williams of Indiana University Maurer School of Law and Professor D. Gordon Smith, Dean and Woodruff J. Deem Professor of Law of BYU Law School) of the popular teaching casebook, Business Organizations: Cases, Problems & Contexts (6th edition, forthcoming 2026).
Professor Kim is also the inaugural Faculty Director of the Korea Law Center and has served in this role since 2016. The mission of the Korea Law Center is to promote practical solutions to problems arising at the intersection of U.S. and Korean laws. The Korea Law Center has facilitated important comparative discussions across diverse topics ranging from constitutional law to business law. In recognition of her service to the Korean community, Professor Kim received the Trailblazer Award from the Orange County Korean American Bar Association (OC KABA) in 2016.
Prior to law teaching, Professor Kim practiced law at Kirkland & Ellis and Shearman & Sterling, where she specialized in the areas of debt finance and capital markets. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her B.A. in Economics, summa cum laude, from Seoul National University. She is a member of the New York and California bars.
(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)
- Business Organizations: Cases, Problems & Context (5th ed. Aspen, 2022) (with D. Gordon Smith & Cynthia A. Williams), and accompanying Teacher’s Manual.
- PracticePerfect Business Organizations (2024) (with Eric Zacks)
- Harnessing the Corporate Intertemporal Wealth Exchange Function to Promote Sustainability, in Research Handbook On Corporate Finance Law (Daniele D’alvia Ed., forthcoming 2025)
Articles
- Compensating a Public Benefit Corporation, 54 SW. L. REV. 108 (2025) (contribution to symposium issue celebrating publication of Michael Dorff, Becoming A Public Benefit Corporation)
- Regulating ESG Using Labels, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly (ASWQ) (2024)
- Managing Variance Among ESG Assessments, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly (ASWQ) (2023)
- The Duality of Variance Among ESG Assessments, 88 Mo. L. Rev. 1171 (2023)
- Dynamic Corporate Residual Claimants: A Multi-Criteria Assessment, 25 Chap. L. Rev. 67 (2022
- Consumer Primacy: A Dynamic Model of Corporate Governance for Consumer-Centric Businesses, 2022 Utah. L. Rev. 1 (2022)
- Tracing the Diverse History of Corporate Residual Claimants, 95 S. Cal. L. Rev. Postscript 43 (2022)
- Mandating Board Diversity, 97 Ind. L. J. Supp. 31 (2021)
- Tabellion: Secure Legal Contracts on Mobile Devices, Proc. ACM Int. Conf. Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys) (2020) (with Saeed Mirzamohammadi, Yuxin (Myles) Liu, Tianmei Ann Huang, Ardalan Amiri Sani, and Sharad Agarwal)
- De-Democratization of Firms, 9 Harv. Bus. L. Rev. 323 (2019)
- Corporate Long Arms, 50 Ariz. St. L. J. 1067 (2018) (included in the Corporate Practice Commentator)
- Fostering Private Equity Using a Law-First Approach, 13 Asian J. Comp. L. 119 (2018), (peer reviewed)
- Typology of Public-Private Equity, 44 Fla. St. U. L. Rev. 1435 (2017), (included in the Securities Law Review)
- Managing Regulatory Blindspots, 32 Yale J. On Reg. 89 (2015), (selected for presentation at C-LEAF’s Annual Junior Faculty Business and Financial Law Workshop, George Washington University Law School)
- Bounds in Bank Regulation, 125 Yale L. J. F. 185 (2015) (response to Yair Listokin’s Bounded Institutions)
- Corporate Parenthood: Private Equity Duties and Portfolio Company Rights, 34 Rev. Banking & Fin. L. 317 (2014-2015)
- Teaching Corporate Finance, U. Ill. L. Rev. Online (2014), (with Aaron Birk)
Motivation Crowding Out
• Annual Meeting of the Law & Society Association (Chicago, IL; May 2025)
• Presentation to Seoul National University Graduate School of Public Administration faculty and students (Irvine, CA; July 2025)
Regulating ESG Using Labels
• 2024 CARE Conference (virtual; September 2024)
Harnessing the Corporate Intertemporal Wealth Exchange Function to Promote Sustainability
• University of Texas Business Law Workshop (Austin, TX; January 2024)
• Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) 2024 Annual Meeting (Limerick, Ireland; June 2024)
The Power of Variance Among ESG Assessments
• 2023 CARE Conference (virtual; September 2023)
• Emory University School of Law, Presentation to Faculty (Atlanta, GA; December 2022)
• OSU Moritz College of Law Faculty Workshop (Columbus, OH; October 2022)
• UCI Korea Law Center ESG Forum (Irvine, CA; November 2022)
Decentralization and Democracy
• Korea Legislation Research Institute K-Law Forum 2022 (Honolulu, HI; June 2022)
See more events
- UC Irvine School of Law Launches Groundbreaking Korea Law Center Scholars Program
- Summer Kim and Grace Lee on building the bridge between UC Irvine and Korea through the Korea Law Center
- UC Irvine Law Rings in 2025 with National Leadership Roles in Law, Policy and Academia
- Korea University School of Law and UC Irvine Law Announce New Partnership Initiatives
- UCI Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences: Prof. Kim and UCI Law student Ann Huang ‘22 collaborate with UCI-Microsoft Research team to create system for securely signing legal contracts electronically
- Yahoo Finance: Prof. Kim quoted on blockchain and her focus on technology and the law
- UCI Law: Prof. Summer Kim Discusses Corporate Personhood & Artificial Intelligence
- UCI Law: Prof. Kim Research Papers Republished in Corporate Practice Commentator, Securities Law Review