Dr Narine Lalafaryan

Dr Narine Lalafaryan is an Assistant Professor in Corporate Law at the Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, and a Fellow in Law at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.  
Her research and teaching interests cover Corporate Finance, Law and Economics, Economics of Deals, International Finance, and Corporate Law. 

Dr Lalafaryan’s recent law-and-finance paper "Orchestrating Finance with Material Adverse Changes?" (2022) Legal Studies, has won the Best Paper Prize award of the Society of Legal Scholar’s (SLS) Annual Conference. It is the first paper in this area of law to win the award since the establishment of the prize. The Society of Legal Scholars’ selection panel said that they were "...impressed with the originality and reach of Narine’s paper, which they felt makes an important contribution to scholarship in the field". Narine’s paper “Material Adverse Change Uncertainty: Costing a Fortune if Not Corporate Lives” (2021) Journal of Corporate Law Studies is the second most read paper of all time in the JCLS (7000+ downloads) and was featured on The Columbia Law School’s CLS Blue Sky Blog, The Oxford Business Law Blog, and mentioned by Professor Bainbridge’s Blog.

Prior to joining Cambridge University as an Assistant Professor in Corporate Law, Dr Lalafaryan was a Lecturer in Corporate/Financial Law at UCL, Faculty of Laws; Hogan Lovells Scholar at the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law; Harvard Law School (HLS) - University of Cambridge Visiting Scholar at HLS; Visiting Scholar to the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law (Hamburg). Before embarking on her academic career, Narine has been in private practice for a number of years, specialising in corporate law matters and, especially, debt financing transactions, with legal experience both in common law and in civil jurisdictions. 

Dr Lalafaryan holds a PhD in Law and Finance from the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law (Sidney Sussex College). Her inter-disciplinary PhD thesis 'Uncertainty in Debt Finance: Reconceptualising Material Adverse Change Clauses' has won The York Prize of the University of Cambridge (2023), awarded by the Cambridge Law Faculty for a doctoral thesis of  "exceptional quality, which make a substantial contribution to a field of legal knowledge”. For her PhD she was also awarded three merit-based scholarships, including the Hogan Lovells Scholarship in collaboration with the Cambridge Law Faculty. Narine also holds a Master of Law (LL.M.) degree from the University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law (Clare Hall College), for which she was awarded 6 scholarships, including the Cambridge Trust Scholarship. She was also selected for the award of The Pegasus Scholar of The Honourable Society of The Inner Temple in London. Her prior academic experience also includes legal studies at the American University of Armenia (The Vartkess M. Balian Merit Award Nominee) and the Yerevan State University.  

Narine is currently working on her book on ‘Material Adverse Change Clauses’, which will be published with Oxford University Press (forthcoming). The book is the first in its kind and offers an in-depth systematic analysis of MAC clauses and inter-connected provisions in debt finance and in M&A deals, providing comparative data on English, Delaware, New York, and other US laws. She is also presently working on a Law and Finance project called “Modern Capital Providers and the Firm". This inter-disciplinary project re-evaluates foundational legal questions due to the changes in the corporate finance landscape over the past years (2007-2008 global financial crisis, COVID-19, 2023 banking crisis), in particular, with respect to the development of private markets and the substantial growth of alternative asset classes (e.g., private credit).

For her work Narine has employed several different methods: economic analysis of law (including game theory), leximetric data coding, doctrinal, functional comparison, conversations with legal practitioners. 

From April 2024, Narine is a Fellow of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance. Dr Lalafaryan is a Member of the Steering Committee of academic experts of Droit et Croissance - an independent research institute (think tank) that aims to promote growth in France through legal reform based on the economic analysis of law. She is also a Life Member of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge.

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