Professor Samantha J. Prince serves as commenter at Berkeley/Cornell Junior Work Law Scholars Conference

CARLISLE, PA—Professor Samantha J. Prince served as a commentator at the third annual UC Berkeley/Cornell ILR Junior Work Law Scholars Conference, hosted by the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The specialized workshop, organized around the central theme All Law Is Work Law, annually brings together emerging academics and established legal experts for an intensive review of groundbreaking new research in the field.

In her capacity as a senior workshop commentator, Prince provided comprehensive feedback and structural analysis on a competitive working draft presented by Texas Tech University School of Law Assistant Professor Lauren Valastro. Valastro's research details how plan fiduciaries employ manipulative choice architecture and institutional sludge to erect administrative barriers against plan-to-plan retirement rollovers, effectively steering departing workers away from optimizing their 401(k) and retirement prospects to enrich plan administrators.

Prince's selection to vet and provide expert guidance on this retirement benefits scholarship highlights her national standing within the legal academy, drawing upon her extensive published expertise in employee benefits, worker protection frameworks, and systemic statutory transparency.

Professor Samantha J. Prince is a Professor of Law and Director of Legal Analysis & Writing at Penn State Dickinson Law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center and was a partner in a regional law firm, where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly traded company. A significant part of her practice was in employee benefits, including retirement plan design and operation. Her expertise from practice has fueled her research, enabling her to become an expert on 401(k) vesting schedules, employee benefits transparency, and gig work. In practice, most of her clients were small- to medium-sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. Professor Prince brought her practice knowledge to the Law School and established the Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program. She is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog.