If you are a journalist or would like to invite me to participate in an event, please email me at msag@emory.edu. I am also available for some expert-witness and consulting work on legal issues and strategy. My full CV is available here. If you want to see what I have written lately, go to my SSRN page.
Matthew Sag – Biography
(Last revised, September 2025)
Matthew Sag is the Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Science at Emory University Law School. Professor Sag’s research focuses on the intersection of copyright law, text and data mining, machine learning, and generative AI. He also speaks regularly about the broader implications of generative AI and its use as a legal technology. In July 2023, he testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Intellectual Property on copyright and generative AI and his research has appeared in Nature, Science, and leading law reviews including the California Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal, Northwestern University Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review.
Professor Sag was born and educated in Australia. He earned honors in Law at the Australian National University and clerked for Justice Paul Finn at the Australian Federal Court. Professor Sag practiced law in London as an associate at Arnold & Porter, and in Silicon Valley with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. He joined the Emory faculty in 2022 and is proud to call Atlanta home.
Personal details and trivia
Ság is a Hungarian name that one of my ancestors thought would sound inconspicuous and not too Jewish. I don’t speak Hungarian, and I pronounce my name just as it appears (rhymes with “flag”) because that is easier; otherwise, the “a” in Matt and the “a” in Sag sound oddly different.
I have written about being dyslexic. I never used to talk about this, but when I got tenure I decided it was ok. Now I am happy to talk about it endlessly. If you or someone you know is dyslexic, you might find this post encouraging.
My Erdős number is 5. The chain proceeds as follows: Peter Fishburn(1), John Ferejohn(2), Barry Weingast(3), Tonja Jacobi(4), Matthew Sag(5). I do not have an Erdős–Bacon number.
I read a lot of science fiction and I run marathons. I have run 15 marathons since I took up the sport in 2013, including four of the World Majors. My fastest marathon time is 3:27:17 (Fox Valley Marathon, 2015), and I think my slowest is the 2025 London Marathon (4:28?).
My fastest half-marathon is 1:34:12 (New Orleans, 2015)
My best race result is the 2014 SeaShore Half Marathon in Huntington Beach, California: first place in the men’s division, with a time of 1:38:53. 