Paul Stephan joined the Virginia Law faculty in 1979 after finishing a clerkship with Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. of the Supreme Court of the United States. He previously clerked for Levin H. Campbell of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. In his first decade as a legal academic he concentrated on legal issues related to the Soviet Union as well as U.S. taxation and tax policy. Beginning in 1989 he began teaching and writing about international business and its regulation at the international and national level. From 1993 to 1998 he served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, working on tax reform in the former socialist countries, as well as for a range of international organizations focusing on the same set of issues. In 2006-7 he served as counselor on international law to the Legal Adviser of the U.S. Department of State. He has held visiting appointments at the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, the University of Vienna, Lausanne University, Melbourne University, Sydney University, Münster University, Paris II, Sciences Po, and the Interdisciplinary Centre Herzliya. He has worked extensively as an expert on foreign law in litigation and arbitration in several countries and filed briefs in a number of U.S. appellate cases involving questions of international law.