College of Law

Faculty and Staff

B.A., West Chester University of Pennsylvania (1991), Philosophy, summa cum laude
J.D., Harvard Law School (1995)

Email: michael.duff@uwyo.edu
Phone: (307) 766-5319
Office: 211 College of Law

Publications
Presentations
CV
Media Appearances
Professor Duff's Workers' Compensation Blog
Law Professor Group Workers Compensation Blog

Michael C. Duff is the Winston S. Howard Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of Wyoming College of Law. A Wyoming professor since 2006, he is a member of the American Law Institute, a scholar-member of the Center for Progressive Reform and a member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He is a fellow of both the American Bar Foundation and the Pound Civil Justice Institute. On March 1, 2022, Professor Duff was appointed a member of the Missouri Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.

Professor Duff attended college in his late 20s, while simultaneously employed full-time as a union-represented airline ramp worker. The first member of his family to complete college, Professor Duff went straight from the airport tarmac to the Harvard Law School after graduating summa cum laude from West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He ultimately graduated from law school in 1995, and went on to work for a small law firm in Maine, where he represented injured workers and labor unions. After two years of doing that work, Professor Duff joined the National Labor Relations Board, where he served for ten years as a government labor litigator in busy regional offices in Philadelphia and Minneapolis prior to joining the law faculty at the University of Wyoming College of Law.

Professor Duff is now widely considered a national expert on workers’ compensation law and on the National Labor Relations Act. He has written on labor, employment, and personal injury issues, and has been quoted on such matters in various national publications. He is the author (or co-author) of textbooks, treatises, and scholarly articles on these subjects. He is also the founder and co-editor of the highly regarded Workers’ Compensation Law Professors’ Blog.

Professor Duff presently teaches the University of Wyoming College of Law’s courses in Torts, Labor Law, Workers’ Compensation Law, and Evidence. He has also taught Bankruptcy, Employee Benefits Law, Administrative Law, Alternative Dispute Resolution in the Workplace, and Introduction to Law. In 2020, Wyoming students selected Professor Duff outstanding faculty member.

Professor Duff is an avid (but limited) guitar player, and a close reader of the philosopher David Hume. He has been inspired throughout his life and law career by the memory of his grandfather, a Harlan County Kentucky coal miner who died of black lung in his early fifties.