Courtesy Cato Institute

Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a well-known author on public policy and the problems of the American legal system. His widely discussed books include The Litigation Explosion, The Excuse Factory, The Rule of Lawyers and most recently Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America (Encounter), which Publishers Weekly has called "cutting-edge commentary," "astute," "witty" and "hard-hitting."   His writing appears regularly in leading newspapers and magazines, while on the web he founded and continues to run Overlawyered.com, widely cited as the oldest blog on law as well as one of the most popular.  The Washington Post has dubbed him an "intellectual guru of tort reform."