Michael Perino is currently the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York.   A former Wall Street litigator, Perino has testified in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives and has consulted with the Securities and Exchange Commission.  He is frequently quoted in the media on securities and corporate matters.  He has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Morning Edition, and Marketplace, on Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, and on CNBC.

Professor Perino’s primary areas of scholarly interest are securities regulation and litigation, corporations, class actions, and judicial decision making. Professor Perino has also been a Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School (2005), the Justin W. D’Atri Visiting Professor of Law, Business and Society at Columbia Law School (2002), and a Lecturer and Co-Director of the Roberts Program in Law, Business, and Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School (1995-1998). 

The author of numerous articles and monographs on securities regulation, securities fraud, and class action litigation, Professor Perino's comments have appeared and his research has been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Business Week, the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, The Washington Post, and many other publications. 

He was also one of the principal developers of Stanford Law School’s Securities Class Action Clearinghouse,which was nominated by the Smithsonian Institution for the 1997 Computerworld-Smithsonian Award as one of the five most important applications of information technology created by an educational institution. In 2008, he received the U.S Chamber of Commerce’s award for outstanding research on legal reform issues.

Professor Perino received his LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was valedictorian, a James Kent Scholar, and the recipient of the Walter Gellhorn Prize for outstanding proficiency in legal studies. He received his J.D. from Boston College Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Perino began his writing career with The Wright Brothers: A Play, which opened to critical acclaim at the Betsy Ross Elementary School in Mahwah, New Jersey in the spring of 1971.