Alexander Rigby ’23 was raised in the U.S. by a family from Liverpool, England—a “community-focused, working-class town with a heritage of holding power to account,” as Rigby describes it—that shaped his career path.
Rigby was attentive to perceived inequity, especially in the U.S. health care system through his mother’s comparative work as a nurse in the U.K. and the U.S. As a teen, while witnessing a family struggle to pay for their child’s leukemia treatment, he began to see law as a critical tool for justice.
His family moved to Delaware in the late 2000s. Rigby earned his undergraduate degrees in government and economics from the University of Virginia, where he studied with leading antitrust expert Professor Kenneth Elzinga, before coming to Texas Law.
In Austin, he had the formative experience of taking multiple courses with Professor Henry Hu, including Business Associations and Securities Regulation. Rigby also became one of Hu’s research assistants, and he contributed to two articles focused on the financial concept of decoupling—the separation of the economic rights and obligations associated with equity or debt instruments from the legal ownership of those instruments.
Following law school, Rigby clerked for Delaware Court of Chancery Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick. (With two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies incorporated in Delaware, the court is known as a hub for U.S. corporate governance litigation.) In October 2024, Rigby joined the Wilmington, Delaware office of boutique firm Reid Collins & Tsai LLP as an associate. The firm represents corporations, hedge funds, offshore liquidators, trustees, and individuals in cases including financial fraud, Ponzi schemes, cross-border disputes, and professional liability concerns.
Rigby recently talked to Texas Law about his current work, his time at The University of Texas at Austin, and his passion for singing, including acapella and performing in musicals.
You’ve started on a path in business law. What inspires your work at Reid Collins & Tsai?
The firm’s ethos is to level the playing field for our clients, which typically entails taking on powerful corporations and institutions and their well-heeled law firms, or “fighting bullies” as we like to say, whether that’s in insolvency, fiduciary matters, or fraud cases. Law should be used for the right purpose and holding power to account is part of that, especially in fiduciary disputes where there is no real regulatory presence other than a court of equity like the Court of Chancery in Delaware.
So far, I’ve been working on an expedited matter in the Court of Chancery in Delaware. It’s an all-guns-blazing dispute, three months from start to finish. As a part of that case, I’ve taken a deposition in New York and worked on other exciting and interesting matters. It has been a fantastic experience. That’s the benefit of working at a boutique—when the firm is small, there’s a lot of opportunity.
There’s also a strong UT presence at the firm, which has been comforting and exciting. Texas Law graduate and our managing partner Lisa Tsai ’01, plus senior founding partner Bill Reid, among others, teach a Texas Law course Bill created called Complex Financial Litigation, which takes a case study approach to teaching commercial litigation practice.
Speaking of Texas Law, what did you enjoy most about attending the school and what experiences stand out?
It’s the perfect blend of an elite, rigorous law school with a culture in which I was really happy. The breadth of courses was great, and I was also able to make friends, have fun, and get to know Austin. Last year when I was clerking, my prior experience as featured content editor at the Texas Law Review was extremely helpful, since I’d already learned how to correctly cite, find sources, and work with authors. My courses with Professor Hu and Professor James Spindler were very helpful, too. They gave me grounding in business and Delaware law, exposure to modern issues in business law like transactions and trends, and a way to think about the policy behind it all.
You were also a research assistant during your time in law school. What about being an RA was so interesting and valuable?
RA-ing for Professor Hu was a bit of a mini clerkship because he’s so focused on Delaware law. Professor Hu is an incredible scholar, and I learned so much from him. Being his RA was more demanding—and I learned more from that experience—than from anything else in law school. The papers I contributed to were on decoupling. One way to think about decoupling is the unbundling of debt and equity rights and obligations, the idea that people can hedge away their economic interest.
Then came your work with Chancellor McCormick from August 2023 to August 2024. What are some takeaways from your clerkship?
What I wanted out of my clerkship was to touch as many different areas of law and business as possible. The clerkship was like doing a graduate degree in Delaware law. Chancellor McCormick is an incredible jurist, a wonderful human being, but she’s tough and forces you to grow in a sink-or-swim environment. We worked on big matters, including Elon Musk’s pay package, an assessment of the validity of the Activision-Microsoft merger, and whether a stockholder plaintiff stated a claim that officers and directors of Coinbase had committed insider trading. Delaware Chancery is the best clerkship in the country if you want to do business or corporate law.
Let’s switch gears to your passion for music. Tell us more about your singing experience.
Yes, I have performed in different venues since I was young. In undergrad, I was in an acapella group, the Virginia Gentlemen, that performed on cruise ships a couple of times a year.
So, in other personal matters, you’ve come back to Austin?
I liked UT so much that I moved back to Texas! I will still be working on some Delaware matters, and RCT’s headquarters is in Austin. There’s also the new Texas Business Court, and it could be a real opportunity to be on the ground as that develops. Plus, Austin is simply such a great place to live.