Geoffrey Rapp joined DePaul Law as its fourteenth dean in July 2025. Prior to joining DePaul, he was the Harold A. Anderson Professor of Law and Values and senior associate dean for academic affairs at the University of Toledo College of Law, where he was a 21-year faculty member. He received both the university’s Outstanding Faculty Research and Scholarship Award (2016) and the law school's Beth A. Eisler Award for First-Year Teaching (2023).
Dean Rapp teaches and writes in the area of torts, corporate law and the sports industry. He has published articles in journals including the North Carolina Law Review,
Washington University Law Review,
Georgia Law Review,
Washington and Lee Law Review,
BYU Law Review and the Boston University Law Review. He wrote a torts casebook published by Wolters Kluwer (now Aspen Publishing) in 2020. In 2011, Dean Rapp testified before the U.S. Congress on the topic of Dodd-Frank whistleblower bounties.
Dean Rapp earned an AB in economics from Harvard College, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, an MSS from the United States Army War College and a JD from Yale University. While in law school, he served as a notes editor of the Yale Law Journal and as a teaching fellow and head teaching fellow in the Departments of Economics and Computer Science. Before entering law teaching, he clerked for Judge Cornelia Kennedy of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and worked in private practice.
Dean Rapp has been frequently interviewed and quoted by local, national and international media, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition,
CBS Sports,The New York Times,
USA Today,
The San Francisco Chronicle,
The LA Times,
The New York Post,
Business Week,
Forbes,
The Guardian
(UK),The Toronto Star, Toronto’s National Post, BBC Radio,The Washington Post,
The Christian Science Monitor, Scout.com,The Toledo Blade and The Washington Times.
He has served on seven ABA site visit teams, three times as chair and three times as both a site team member and the AALS reporter. He was the chair of the AALS Section on Associate Deans for Academic Affairs and Research in 2019 and served on the LSAC's Assessments Committee from 2022 to 2025 and on its Finance and Legal Affairs Committee from 2017 to 2019.
Dean Rapp is licensed to practice law in Illinois, New York and Ohio.
Education
JD, Yale University; MSS, US Army War College; AB, magna cum laude, Harvard College
SSRN