Tracy Reilly teaches real property and intellectual property courses at the School of Law. Before joining the faculty in 2006, she was a partner at Kirkland & Ellis LLP in Chicago, where she worked in the areas of intellectual property, entertainment, advertising, and corporate law. She has also worked as in-house counsel for an independent record label where she specialized in international licensing transactions, at a boutique entertainment law firm in Chicago, and as a law clerk for both the Honorable Wayne R. Andersen in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and the Honorable Anne M. Burke in the Appellate Court of Illinois. Her clients have included Kraft, Sara Lee, Kellogg, Honeywell, Madison Dearborn Partners, United Airlines, the Chicago Sun-Times, Rand McNally, and the estates of gospel star Mahalia Jackson and Charles Stepney, producer for Earth, Wind & Fire.

As Executive Director from 2014-22, Professor Reilly oversaw all aspects of the school’s innovative Program in Law & Technology, including organizing an annual, full-day CLE seminar, scholarly symposia, and other events on current topics in intellectual property, technology, cyberlaw, entertainment, and data privacy protection, as well as planning and participating in diverse cross-campus university events.

Professor Reilly's research interests are focused primarily in copyright and trademark law, with a particular focus on heavy metal music and digital sampling, as well as the interdisciplinary cross-sections of law with philosophy, literature, psychology, religion, and the occult. She recently received her M.A. in English Literature from the University of Dayton, and is a regular speaker at law and other co-disciplinary conferences, recently including “Metal in Strange Places,” and the “International Vampire Film & Arts Festival” in Transylvania, Romania.