John Orcutt

Professor John Orcutt (he/him/his) teaches courses in Business Associations, Business Transactions, Mergers and Acquisitions, Personal Federal Income Taxation, Securities Regulation, and Valuation and the Law. He has also taught Contracts, Sales (Article 2 and the CISG), and Start-up Company Finance. Professor Orcutt has been selected as the law school’s outstanding teacher of the year seven times, and he was awarded UNH’s Kidder Faculty Award in 2023. Professor Orcutt previously served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Faculty Research, and he helped create the law school’s dual J.D./MBA program with UNH’s Paul College of Business and Economics.
Before coming to UNH Law, Professor Orcutt worked as a capital markets attorney and an investment banker. Professor Orcutt was a Principal at Robertson Stephens, a Silicon Valley investment bank, where he was the head of its West Coast Telecom Services investment banking practice. He also served as Chief Administrative Officer for Robertson Stephens’ Mergers and Acquisitions group and as the firm’s Associate General Counsel. Prior to Robertson Stephens, Professor Orcutt was a Corporate Finance Associate with Shearman & Sterling, serving in both its New York, NY and Paris, France offices, where he specialized in securities offerings by European companies conducting dual listings in the United States and Europe.
Professor Orcutt’s research interests focus on innovation systems and how to improve the environment for entrepreneurial companies and technology-based economic growth. Professor Orcutt does extensive work in the areas of patent valuation, technology commercialization, and startup companies. He also conducts research in various Native American law topics. His book, Patent Valuation: Improving Decision Making through Analysis (Wiley Finance), is a leading patent-valuation book and was translated into Chinese in 2017. Professor Orcutt regularly travels the globe to advise IP professionals, entrepreneurs, judges, and government officials about valuing and monetizing IP. He has conducted workshops, given presentations, and taught graduate classes in such countries as Argentina, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Hungary, Indonesia, Latvia, Thailand, and Vietnam.