Professor Samantha Prince presents at the 2026 AALS Annual Meeting

CARLISLE, Pa.—Professor Samantha Prince presented at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) 2026 Annual Meeting as part of the Section on Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation panel titled “Trump 2.0 Impacts on Employee Benefits.” As a member of the panel, Prince presented on her recent publication, “Nest Eggs and Lifelines: The Overlooked Strain of Economic Volatility on 401(k) Participants.”

Her presentation included a discussion of the economic volatility resulting from President Donald Trump’s policies, such as tariffs and immigrant deportation, and their detrimental impact on retirement savings. Retirees rely on 401(k) plan balances to fund their living costs, which are higher than anticipated due to inflation. But the effects of economic volatility on 401(k) values extend well beyond retirees. Because these accounts serve a dual purpose—funding both retirement and, at times, current spending—workers who are years away from retirement also feel the impact. As such, Prince’s discussion included the ways in which inflation and recessionary pressures drive pre-retirement withdrawals.

Professor Samantha Prince is an associate professor of 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 Penn State 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.