Prior to joining the faculty in 2000, Professor Kuney was a partner in the San Diego office of Allen Matkins Leck Gamble & Mallory LLP where he concentrated his practice on insolvency and reorganization matters nationwide. Before that he received his legal training with the Morrison & Foerster and Howard Rice (now Arnold & Porter) firms in his hometown of San Francisco, California. He holds an AV Peer Rating, Martindale-Hubbell’s highest peer rating for ethical standards and legal ability and is admitted to practice in the state and federal courts of California and Tennessee, the federal courts of Arizona, and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kuney’s expertise and scholarly interests relate to business transactions and litigation with an emphasis on business organizations, mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, and reorganizations. He is the faculty editor and advisor of Transactions: The Tennessee Journal of Business Law and the faculty advisor for the Sports and Entertainment Society. He consults with law firms and clients nationwide in his areas of expertise in a limited number of matters annually, generally related to business law, bankruptcy, contracts, corporate law and structure, legal drafting and writing, commercial law, chapter 11, and insolvency. He has served as an American Arbitration Association arbitrator and conducts transactional training seminars and clinics for law students, lawyers, and law firms across the country.

Kuney lives near the College of Law in the Fort Sanders neighborhood of Knoxville, with his wife, Donna C. Looper, also an attorney and an adjunct professor at the College of Law, with whom he has co-authored several books and articles. His other interests include entrepreneurship, travel, straight-line walking, history, land use and real estate development, and Lady Vols and Vols basketball.

Kuney designed and implemented the College’s three tiered contract drafting program. This program begins in the 1L year with Contracts I and II, and continues into the 2L and 3L years with Contract Drafting, advanced specialty draft courses such as Commercial Leasing, Construction Law, Mergers and Acquisitions, Software Licensing and one of the concentration’s capstone courses, Representing Enterprises.

He has been awarded the College of Law’s W. Allen Separk Faculty Scholarship Award (2003), the Carden Award for Outstanding Service to the Institution (2004 and 2010), the Harold C. Warner Outstanding Teacher Award (2005), and the Carden Award for Outstanding Achievement in Scholarship (2007 and 2015). He also earned the University of Tennessee’s Chancellor’s Excellence in Graduate Mentoring and Advising award (2017) and its Research Spotlight Award (2019), and the Tina L. Stark Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills at Emory University College of Law’s Seventh Biennial Conference on the Teaching of Transactional Law and Skills (2021).

BA, 1986, University of California, Santa Cruz

JD, (cum laude), 1989, University of California Hastings College of the Law

MBA, 1997, University of San Diego