Biography

Richard Frankel writes in the areas of immigration, prisoner rights, civil justice, and federal courts. He is the founder of the law school's Federal Litigation and Appeals Clinic.

Students in the clinic litigate immigration and other matters on behalf of indigent and other needy individuals, in accordance with local student practice rules. The clinic currently focuses largely on immigration matters. In prior years, the clinic also has represented individuals in employment discrimination, prisoner civil rights, family law, and environmental protection cases. Representative decisions include Nelson v. Attorney General (3d Cir. 2021); Jaludi v. Citigroup, 933 F.3d 246 (3d Cir. 2019) Bennett v. Superintendent Graterford SCI, 886 F.3d 268 (3d Cir. 2018); Gonzalez v. Berryhill, 340 F. Supp. 3d 424 (E.D. Pa. 2018); Ball v. Famiglio, 726 F.3d 448 (3d Cir. 2013) Byrd v. Shannon, 715 F.3d 117 (3d Cir. 2013); and Adkins v. VIM Recycling, Inc., 644 F.3d 483 (7th Cir. 2011).

Professor Frankel's scholarship has been published in leading law reviews, including the University of Chicago Law Review, the UC Davis Law Review, the Washington University Law Review, the Texas Law Review See Also, and the Cardozo Law Review De Novo. His article “Corporate Hostility to Arbitration”  won the 2022 Pound Civil Justice Institute Scholarship Award.

Before joining the law school faculty, Professor Frankel served as a teaching fellow and supervising attorney for the Georgetown University Law Center’s Appellate Litigation Program. Before that, he was the Goldberg-Deitzler Fellow for Trial Lawyers for Public Justice in Washington, D.C., where he litigated class-action consumer protection and civil rights cases.

A graduate of Yale Law School, he was senior editor of the Yale Law Journal, articles editor of Yale Law & Policy Review and student director of the Community Legal Services Clinic. After law school, he clerked for Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and Judge William C. Canby Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Professor Frankel sits on the Advisory Board for the Drexel University Teaching and Learning Center, serves as a mentor in the University’s CANOPI program, and previously served as a University Provost Fellow. Outside of Drexel, he serves as a board member for the Jewish Children’s Folkshul, a secular humanist Jewish community.