Past Events
In addition to its research agenda, the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession organizes presentations, conferences and other events to engage and inform a wider public.
UCI Long US-China Institute, GLAS & CERLP | Sida Liu, "Where Rookies Prevail: Digital Habitus and Age-based Earnings Differentials in Online Legal Services"
2/24/2022
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
The UCI Long US-China Institute and the UCI Law Center on Globalization, Law, and Society and Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcome Sida Liu (University of Toronto) to discuss "Where Rookies Prevail: Digital Habitus and Age-based Earnings Differentials in Online Legal Services" (with Yao Yao, University of Ottawa).
Abstract
This project investigates how and why the field of digital professional work can generate unconventional age-based earnings differentials that advantage younger workers. Analyzing a service archive dataset from a major online legal service platform in China, the study finds that, contrary to the patterns of income inequality in traditional legal fields, younger lawyers earn more than older lawyers in the digital legal field. Further analyses of the platform work content and interviews with lawyers working on this platform suggest that the platform’s mechanism for distributing work opportunities makes mature lawyers’ expertise and capital less useful. Meanwhile, the digital legal field places added value on younger lawyers’ digital habitus and turns it into a new form of cultural capital, manifested in their proficiency and effectiveness in digital communication. While their digital habitus helps younger lawyers outperform older lawyers in online platform-based services, however, this advantage in a lower-status subfield may reinforce their disadvantaged positions in the whole profession. By examining habitus and capital in the emerging digital legal field, this research deepens the understanding of the impact of digital technologies on knowledge-intensive occupations.
About Sida Liu
Sida Liu is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Law at the University of Toronto. He received his LL.B. from Peking University Law School and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. Professor Liu has conducted extensive empirical research on China’s legal reform and legal profession. In addition to his empirical work, he also writes on theories of law, professions and social spaces. Professor Liu is a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation, a Vice President of the China Institute for Socio-Legal Studies, as well as an affiliated scholar of the U.S.-Asia Law Institute at New York University and the Center on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. In 2016-2017, he was a Member of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study.
CJRI & CERLP | Access to Justice Colloquium: Margaret Hagan
2/7/2022
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
401 E. Peltason Drive, Suite 1000, Irvine, CA 92697-8000
The UCI Law Civil Justice Research Initiative and Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcome Margaret Hagan, Lecturer in Law and Executive Director of the Legal Design Lab, Stanford Law School, to present, "Justice Innovation: New Methods to Improve Access to the Courts."
About Margaret Hagan
Margaret Hagan is the Executive Director of the Legal Design Lab and a lecturer at Stanford Institute of Design (the d.school). She was a fellow at the d.school from 2013-2014, where she launched the Program for Legal Tech & Design, experimenting in how design can make legal services more usable, useful & engaging. She teaches a series of project-based classes, with interdisciplinary student groups tackling legal challenges through user-focused research and design of new legal products and services. She also leads workshops to train legal professionals in the design process, to produce client-focused innovation. Margaret graduated from Stanford Law School in June 2013. She served as a student fellow at the Center for Internet & Society and president of the Stanford Law and Technology Association. While a student, she built the game app Law Dojo to make studying for law school classes more interactive & engaging. She also started the blog Open Law Lab to document legal innovation and design work. Margaret holds an AB from the University of Chicago, an MA from Central European University in Budapest, and a PhD from Queen’s University Belfast in International Politics.
About the CJRI Access to Justice Colloquium
Civil legal problems are increasingly prevalent in everyday life, but access to information, expertise, and assistance in resolving these problems remains uneven. The UCI Law Civil Justice Research Initiative welcomes several leading scholars whose research addresses various dimensions of the access to justice crisis.
In-person attendance limited to UCI faculty/staff/students. Events will be streamed by Zoom for remote participation.
CERLP, UCI Anthropology & ABF | Justin Richland Book Launch, Cooperation without Submission
1/27/2022
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP), the UCI Department of Anthropology, and the American Bar Foundation (ABF) welcome Justin B. Richland to discuss his recently published book, Cooperation without Submission: Indigenous Jurisdictions in Native Nation–US Engagements (University of Chicago Press, 2021).
With comments from:
Elizabeth Mertz, ABF & University of Wisconsin Law School
Joseph Weiss, Wesleyan University
John Borrows, University of Victoria Law School
Maggie Blackhawk, NYU Law
Introductory remarks from Ann Southworth (UCI Law) and a toast by Bill Maurer (UCI School of Social Sciences).
About the Book
It is well-known that there is a complicated relationship between Native American Tribes and the US government. Relations between Tribes and the federal government are dominated by the principle that the government is supposed to engage in meaningful consultations with the tribes about issues that affect them.
In Cooperation without Submission, Justin B. Richland, an associate justice of the Hopi Appellate Court and ethnographer, closely examines the language employed by both Tribes and government agencies in over eighty hours of meetings between the two. Richland shows how Tribes conduct these meetings using language that demonstrates their commitment to nation-to-nation interdependency, while federal agents appear to approach these consultations with the assumption that federal law is supreme and ultimately authoritative. In other words, Native American Tribes see themselves as nations with some degree of independence, entitled to recognition of their sovereignty over Tribal lands, while the federal government acts to limit that authority. In this vital book, Richland sheds light on the ways the Tribes use their language to engage in “cooperation without submission.”
About the Author
Justin B. Richland is a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation and Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine. Prior to his appointment as an ABF Faculty Fellow, Professor Richland served as a Research Professor at the ABF from 2016-2018. He studies contemporary Native American law and politics, particularly with a focus on the interactions between tribal nations in the U.S. and the U.S. federal and state governments. His work has been published in several leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Annual Review of Anthropology, Law and Social Inquiry, and the Maryland Journal of International Law. In addition to Cooperation without Submission, he is the author of two books: Arguing with Tradition: The Language of Law in Hopi Tribal Court (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies (with Sarah Deer), (Alta Mira Press, 2015). In April 2016, he was named a J.S. Guggenheim Fellow.
From 2011-2018, Professor Richland served as an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and as an Associate Member at the University of Chicago Law School. From 2005-2011, he was a professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine. In 2014, he was appointed Adjunct Curator of North American Anthropology at the Field Museum of Natural History and in 2015, he was appointed to his second term by the Hopi Tribal Government as Associate Justice of the Hopi Appellate Court. From 2006-2009, he served as Justice Pro Tempore.
Professor Richland earned his J.D. at University of California, Berkeley and his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles.
CERLP | Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine, The Behavioral Code
1/19/2022
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcomes Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine to discuss their recently published book, The Behavioral Code: The Hidden Ways the Law Makes Us Better ... Or Worse (Beacon Press, 2021).
About the Book
Why do some laws radically change behavior whereas others are consistently ignored and routinely broken? Why do we keep relying on harsh punishment against crime even though it continues to fail?
Professors Benjamin van Rooij and Adam Fine present the first accessible analysis of behavioral jurisprudence, which will fundamentally alter how we understand the connection between law and human behavior. Drawing upon decades of research, the authors reveal the behavioral code: the root causes and hidden forces that drive human behavior and our responses to society’s laws.
About the Authors
Benjamin van Rooij is Faculty Director of Research and Professor of Law and Society at the Faculty of Law, University of Amsterdam. He also directs the Center for Law and Behavior, also at the University of Amsterdam. He is also a Global Professor of Law at UCI Law. He studies and teaches about the interaction between law and behavior. His current research focuses on individual differences in compliance, toxic corporate culture, and assumptions about behavioral change. His past work looked at compliance, regulatory law enforcement and access to justice in China in a comparative perspective. He is also co-editor of Regulation & Governance, and founding convener of ComplianceNet a global network of compliance scholars. He currently leads an ERC-funded research project about behavioral assumptions in the field of law. In addition, he collaborates with an interdisciplinary team to study compliance with Covid-19 mitigation measures.
Adam D. Fine is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. He received his doctorate, specializing in developmental psychology and quantitative methods, from the University of California, Irvine. A developmental psychologist conducting research at the intersection of psychology, law, public policy, and criminology, Fine’s research broadly focuses on juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice. His current work centers on two areas: 1) how youth develop their perceptions of law enforcement, the law, and the justice system, paying particular attention to developmental trends and racial-ethnic differences; and 2) how experiences with the juvenile justice system affect youth outcomes and disparities. He is the PI of the Youth Justice Lab: https://sites.google.com/view/youthjusticelab/home
Registrants will receive a 30 percent discount on book purchases with a code included in email confirmation.
CERLP & ABF | Bryant Garth & Yves Dezalay Book Launch, Law as Reproduction and Revolution
12/6/2021
10:00:00 AM to 11:00:00 AM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) and the American Bar Foundation (ABF) welcome Bryant Garth and Yves Dezalay to discuss their recently published book, Law as Reproduction and Revolution: An Interconnected History (UC Press).
With comments from:
Ron Levi, University of Toronto Faculty of Law
Ann Southworth, UCI Law
David Wilkins, Harvard Law School
Introductory remarks from Swethaa Ballakrishnen (UCI Law) and a toast by Sara Dezalay (Cardiff School of Law and Politics).
About the Book
This sweeping book details the extent to which the legal revolution emanating from the US has transformed legal hierarchies of power across the globe, while also analyzing the conjoined global histories of law and social change from the Middle Ages to today. It examines the global proliferation of large corporate law firms—a US invention—along with US legal education approaches geared toward those corporate law firms. This neoliberal-inspired revolution attacks complacent legal oligarchies in the name of America-inspired modernism. Drawing on the combined histories of the legal profession, imperial transformations, and the enduring and conservative role of cosmopolitan elites at the top of legal hierarchies, the book details case studies in India, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, and China to explain how interconnected legal histories are stories of both revolution and reproduction. Theoretically and methodologically ambitious, it offers a wholly new approach to studying interrelated fields across time and geographies.
About the Authors
Yves Dezalay is Emeritus Director of Research, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Bryant G. Garth is Interim Dean and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
Book is available for digital download here, and a code will be sent to registrants for a discount on hardcopy.
CERLP | Anna Offit, "Thinking Inside the Box: How Imagined Jurors Shape Prosecutorial Discretion"
11/19/2021
2:00:00 PM to 3:00:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcomes Anna Offit, Assistant Professor of Law at SMU Dedman School of Law, to present excerpts from The Imagined Juror: How Hypothetical Juries Influence Federal Prosecutors (NYU Press, 2022).
Examines the outsized influence of jurors on prosecutorial discretion
Thanks to television and popular media, the jury is deeply embedded in the American public’s imagination of the legal system. For the country’s federal prosecutors, however, jurors have become an increasingly rare sight. Today, in fact, less than 2% of their cases will proceed to an actual jury trial. And yet, when federal prosecutors describe their jobs and what the profession means to them, the jury is a central theme.
Anna Offit’s The Imagined Juror examines the counterintuitive importance of jurors in federal prosecutors’ work at a moment when jury trials are statistically in decline. Drawing on extensive field research among federal prosecutors, the book represents “the first ethnographic study of US attorneys,” according to legal scholar Annelise Riles. It describes a world of legal practice in which jurors are frequently summoned—as make- believe audiences for proposed arguments, hypothetical evaluators of evidence, and invented decision- makers who would work together to reach a verdict. Even the question of moving forward with a prosecution often hinges on how federal prosecutors assume a jury will react to elements of the case—an exercise where the perspectives of the public are imagined and incorporated into every stage of trial preparation.
Based on these findings, Offit argues that the decreasing number of jury trials at the federal level has not eliminated the influence of the jury but altered it. As imaginary figures, jurors continue to play an important and understudied role in shaping the work and professional identities of federal prosecutors. At the same time, imaginary jurors are not real jurors, and prosecutors at times caricature the public by leaning on stereotypes or preconceived and simplistic ideas about how laypeople think. Imagined jurors, it turns out, are a critical, if flawed, resource for introducing lay perspective into the legal process. As Offit shows, recentering laypeople and achieving the democratic promise of our legal system will require renewed commitment to the jury trial and juries that reflect the diversity of the American public.
About Anna Offit
Anna Offit is a legal scholar and cultural anthropologist with broad interests in prosecutorial ethics, the U.S. jury system, comparative law, and law and society. Her current research is on lay participation in the U.S. legal system. She teaches criminal law, evidence, and a research seminar on criminal jury reform.
Offit’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review, the Northwestern University Law Review, the Fordham Law Review, the Washington Law Review, the Ohio State Law Journal, the UC Irvine Law Review, and the Political and Legal Anthropology Review among other law review and peer-reviewed journals. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S.-Norway Fulbright Foundation, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, and the Lois Roth Foundation.
Offit is a graduate of Princeton University’s Anthropology PhD program, and received her JD from the Georgetown University Law Center where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics and as a law clerk at the Department of Justice’s Office for Civil Rights.
Prior to joining the faculty at SMU Dedman School of Law, Offit served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at NYU Law School’s Civil Jury Project. She was also the recipient of a Fulbright grant to study the abolition of Norway’s jury system, and a Graduate Prize Fellowship from the Princeton University Center for Human Values.
Offit is an active member of the Law & Society Association and the Association for Political and Legal Anthropology.
Zoom information and draft papers will be circulated to those who register. To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP | Catherine Albiston, Scott Cummings & Richard Abel, "Making Public Interest Lawyers in a Time of Crisis"
4/2/2021
3:00:00 PM to 4:15:00 PM
Catherine Albiston, Jackson H. Ralston Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), UC Berkeley; Scott Cummings, Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics and Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law; and Richard Abel, Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA School of Law, will present their paper, "Making Public Interest Lawyers in a Time of Crisis: An Evidence-Based Approach."
Abstract
Now is a critical time to consider the role that lawyers—and the law schools that produce them—can play in movements for social transformation. Over the past half-century, public interest lawyers who represent subordinated communities in the pursuit of equal justice have contributed significantly to such movements: mobilizing law to fight discrimination, expand access to social benefits, promote the inclusion of immigrants and others branded outsiders, and protect the rights of low-wage workers and the unhoused. While some law schools have invested resources to train students seeking public interest careers, most continue to focus on placing students in lucrative law firms: elevating a neoliberal conception of legal education that seeks to maximize return on investment, rather than promoting the professional role of lawyers in democratic society. Even those law schools dedicated to helping students enter public interest careers lack basic information about which interventions are most likely to work. This Article fills that critical information gap by providing the first systematic empirical evidence about what law schools can do to help students build long-term public interest careers. Based on original data collected through a National Science Foundation-funded survey of a decade of graduates from six California law schools, this Article looks beyond the “drift” away from public interest work during law school to analyze the factors that promote what we call “public interest persistence,” or dedication to public interest work throughout one’s career. Using statistical techniques to evaluate the importance of endowment effects—what students bring to law school—and educational effects—what they experience there—we reveal the underappreciated ways that law schools do, in fact, matter in shaping public interest careers. In particular, we find that law schools play a crucial facilitative role: guiding students toward public interest careers through externships, summer jobs, and extracurricular activities that equip students with the tools they need to navigate the public interest job market and pursue social justice over the course of their professional lives. Based on these critical new findings, the Article offers policy recommendations for how law schools can build on current programs in support of public interest careers and urges rethinking what it means to practice public interest law—and advance broader demands for fundamental change—that respond to the urgency of the current crisis.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP & ABF | Book Launch: Swethaa Ballakrishnen, Accidental Feminism
3/11/2021
1:00:00 PM to 2:30:00 PM
Hosted by the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) and the American Bar Foundation (ABF), Assistant Professor of Law and CERLP Co-Director Swethaa Ballakrishnen will present their recently released book, Accidental Feminism: Gender Parity and Selective Mobility among India's Professional Elite (Princeton 2021).
Introduction by UCI Law Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and CERLP Co-Director, Bryant Garth, with comments by: Ronit Dinovitzer, Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto and ABF Faculty Fellow; Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Dean and Professor of Law, BostonUniversity School of Law; and Susan Sturm,
George M. Jaffin Professor of Law and SocialResponsibility, Columbia Law School; with a toast by David Wilkins, Lester Kissel Professor of Law and faculty director of theCenter on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School,
Publisher's Description
In India, elite law firms offer a surprising oasis for women within a hostile, predominantly male industry. Less than 10 percent of the country’s lawyers are female, but women in the most prestigious firms are significantly represented both at entry and partnership. Elite workspaces are notorious for being unfriendly to new actors, so what allows for aberration in certain workspaces?
Drawing from observations and interviews with more than 130 elite professionals, Accidental Feminism examines how a range of underlying mechanisms—gendered socialization and essentialism, family structures and dynamics, and firm and regulatory histories—afford certain professionals egalitarian outcomes that are not available to their local and global peers. Juxtaposing findings on the legal profession with those on elite consulting firms, Swethaa Ballakrishnen reveals that parity arises not from a commitment to create feminist organizations, but from structural factors that incidentally come together to do gender differently. Simultaneously, their research offers notes of caution: while conditional convergence may create equality in ways that more targeted endeavors fail to achieve, “accidental” developments are hard to replicate, and are, in this case, buttressed by embedded inequalities. Ballakrishnen examines whether gender parity produced without institutional sanction should still be considered feminist.
In offering new ways to think about equality movements and outcomes, Accidental Feminism forces readers to critically consider the work of intention in progress narratives.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP 2021 Spring Workshop Series: Ji Li
2/26/2021
2:30:00 PM to 3:30:00 PM
Ji Li, John & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law at UCI School of Law, will present his paper, "In Comrades We Trust: the Expatriation of US Legal Managers by Chinese Multinational Companies."
CERLP’s Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
Zoom information and draft papers will be sent to those who register.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP | Book Talk: Mitt Regan, Big Law
2/18/2021
5:00:00 PM to 6:15:00 PM
Mitt Regan, McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence Co-Director of the Center on National Security and the Law, and Director of the Center on the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law, will present his recently released book, Big Law: Money and Meaning in the Modern Law Firm (Chicago 2021).
Publisher's Description
The Great Recession intensified large law firms’ emphasis on financial performance, leading to claims that lawyers in these firms were now guided by business rather than professional values. Based on interviews with more than 250 partners in large firms, Mitt Regan and Lisa H. Rohrer suggest that the reality is much more complex. It is true that large firm hiring, promotion, compensation, and termination policies are more influenced by business considerations than ever before and that firms actively recruit profitable partners from other firms to replace those they regard as unproductive. At the same time, law firm partners continue to seek the non-financial rewards of being members of a distinct profession and are sensitive to whether their firms are committed to providing them. Regan and Rohrer argue that modern firms responding effectively to business demands while credibly affirming the importance of non-financial professional values can create strong cultures that enhance their ability to weather the storms of the modern legal market.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP | Bryant Garth & Joyce Sterling, "The Two Hemispheres of Solo Practice: Entrepreneurial Paths with and without Corporate Legal Capital"
11/12/2020
5:00:00 PM to 6:15:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcomes Bryant Garth, Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCI Law, and Joyce Sterling, Professor Emerita at University of Denver College of Law, to present their paper, "The Two Hemispheres of Solo Practice: Entrepreneurial Paths with and without Corporate Legal Capital."
Abstract
We proceed in four parts after a brief introduction. The first part reviews the relatively limited literature on solo practitioners. The second draws on the aggregate AJD data to portray the typical solo practitioner in the data base. The third part then uses the qualitative interviews to illustrate the lawyers who map to the typical solo practitioners. Prior to the conclusion, the fourth part depicts a set of solo practitioners that do not figure in the literature. They are products of a new world of corporate law firms, and take their contacts, expertise, and symbolic capital to thrive in the same space as boutique law firms.
About the Authors
Joyce Sterling is Professor Emeriti of Legal Ethics and the Legal Profession at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. She has devoted more than two decades to the study of the legal profession and legal education. Her recent research has focused on the problems facing women in legal careers compared to their male counterparts and issues associated with the downturn in legal education. Professor Sterling has recently served as Advisory Council/Senior Researcher to the ABA Presidential Initiative on Achieving Long-Term Careers for Women in Law. Since 1997, Professor Sterling has been one of the co-principal investigators on the “After the JD” study, the first national, longitudinal study of careers of lawyers in the U.S., and is currently working on the collaborative book focusing on the results of that study.
Bryant Garth is a Co-Director of the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession and Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCI Law. His scholarship focuses on the legal profession, the sociology of law, and globalization. Two of his books co-authored with Yves Dezalay, Dealing in Virtue (1996) and Asian Legal Revivals (2010), were given the Herbert Jacobs Award from the Law and Society Association as the best books in the field of Law and Society published that year. He also served as co-editor of the Journal of Legal Education from 2011-14. He has previously held administrative positions as Vice Dean at UCI Law, Dean of Southwestern Law School, Dean of Indiana University Bloomington School of law, and Director of the American Bar Foundation.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu
CERLP | Amanda Hollis-Brusky & Joshua C. Wilson, Separate But Faithful: The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture
10/1/2020
5:00:00 PM to 6:15:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcomes Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College, and Joshua C. Wilson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver, to discuss their recent book, Separate but Faithful: The Christian Right's Radical Struggle to Transform Law & Legal Culture (Oxford 2020).
Fueled by grassroots activism and a growing collection of formal political organizations, the Christian Right became an enormously influential force in American law and politics in the 1980s and 90s. While this vocal and visible political movement has long voiced grave concerns about the Supreme Court and cases such as Roe v. Wade, they weren't able to effectively enter the courtroom in a serious and sustained way until recently. During the pivot from the 20th to the 21st century, a small constellation of high-profile Christian Right leaders began to address this imbalance by investing in an array of institutions aimed at radically transforming American law and legal culture.
In Separate But Faithful, Amanda Hollis-Brusky and Joshua C. Wilson provide an in-depth examination of these efforts, including their causes, contours and consequences. Drawing on an impressive amount of original data from a variety of sources, they look at the conditions that gave rise to a set of distinctly "Christian Worldview" law schools and legal institutions. Further, Hollis- Brusky and Wilson analyze their institutional missions and cultural makeup and evaluate their transformative impacts on law and legal culture to date. In doing so, they find that this movement, while struggling to influence the legal and political mainstream, has succeeded in establishing a Christian conservative beacon of resistance; a separate but faithful space from which to incrementally challenge the dominant legal culture.
Both a compelling narrative of the rise of Christian Right lawyers and a trenchant analysis of how institutional networks fuel the growth of social movements, Separate But Faithful challenges the dominant perspectives of the politics of law in contemporary America.
Amanda Hollis-Brusky is Associate Professor of Politics at Pomona College, where she teaches courses on American politics, constitutional law, and legal institutions. Her first book Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution (OUP 2015, 2019) was the winner of the 2016 C. Herman Pritchett Award for Best Book on Law and Courts from the American Political Science Association.
Joshua C. Wilson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Denver where his research and teaching addresses law, conservatism, and politics in the United States. He has two books on abortion politics: The Street Politics of Abortion: Speech, Violence, and America's Culture Wars (2013) and The New States of Abortion Politics (2016).
This is a virtual event. Zoom login details will be sent to all those who RSVP.
NOTE: This event is being recorded for archival, educational, and related promotional purposes. All audience members agree to the possibility of appearing on these recordings by virtue of attending the event or participating in the event.
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP | Susan Carle, "The Current Anxiety About 'JD Advantage' Jobs: An Analysis"
9/10/2020
5:00:00 PM to 6:15:00 PM
The UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession welcomes Professor Susan Carle, Vice Dean and Professor of Law at American University Washington College of Law, to discuss her paper, "The Current Anxiety About 'JD Advantage' Jobs: An Analysis."
To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please email centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: Nina Varsava
8/21/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
Nina Varsava, Assistant Professor of Law at University of Wisconsin, Madison, will present her paper, "Opinions and Gender at the Federal Courts of Appeals."
Abstract
This paper presents results from a quantitative, computational study of signed judicial opinions, both published and unpublished, issued by the U.S. federal courts of appeals from 2005 to 2015. The study tests whether and to what extent opinion writing, publication status, unanimity, and impact differ between genders. My early results suggest that women’s opinions are less likely to be published than men’s, that women’s opinions include more citations to authority, and that judges are more likely to write separately when a woman writes the majority opinion in a case.
The preliminary results provide evidence of systematic differences in the professional realities of men and women judges, and lend support to anecdotal and qualitative evidence indicating that women judges are under disproportionate pressure to prove themselves and to appear authoritative to others. My findings also suggest that the views and work products of women judges receive less peer support than those of men. I suggest that gender bias together with entrenched gender roles are substantial sources of the gender differences that the data reveal. And I argue that, if we care about gender inequality in the judiciary, we should care not only about the underrepresentation of women, but also and perhaps even more so about disparities that affect women who make it onto the bench.
Zoom information, as well as the paper, will be sent to those who register. To request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: Atinuke (Tinu) Adediran
8/14/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
Atinuke (Tinu) Adediran, David and Pamela Donohue Assistant Professor in Business Law at Boston College Law School, will present her paper, "Public Interest Law Leadership—So White."
Abstract
The public interest law sector provides legal services and engages in law reform efforts that impact poor people who are disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Yet, those who manage the institutions within the sector—executive directors, boards of directors, and law firm pro bono partners and counsels—who control policies, strategies, and make decisions that impact communities of color, are mostly White. This article presents the first national data of executive directors and board members of nonprofit legal services organizations, and pro bono partners and counsels in large firms, and interview data of a subset of these groups. The Article starts the conversation about the lack of diversity among the leaders in the sector.
Increasing racial and ethnic diversity in public interest law leadership is crucial because public interest law leaders determine among other things, the lawyers who provide legal services to clients, and the kinds of legal services or law reform efforts provided. I consider several plausible reasons for why public interest law leadership lacks racial and ethnic diversity, including whether there is a pipeline problem, the impact of low wages on retention, the lack of diversity in large law firms, homophily, and the impact of implicit bias. I then propose policy considerations that can tackle some of the reasons why racial diversity is lacking, including integrating racial justice into antipoverty law.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: Ji Li
8/7/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
Ji Li, John & Marilyn Long Professor of US-China Business and Law at UCI School of Law, will present his paper, "The Purchase of US Legal Service by Chinese Multinationals."
Abstract
Chinese firms in the US rely regularly on external lawyers to navigate the complex US legal system. However, little do we know about their purchase of US legal services, as the literature on the subject has neglected emerging market MNCs. This essay attempts to narrow the gap by empirical examining the quantity of US legal services purchased by Chinese companies in the US. The article relies on a comprehensive survey dataset and interviews that reveal significant inter-company variations. The analysis will concentrate on several usual suspects, including service demand and the ownership structure of Chinese investors, a distinct attribute of many large emerging market MNCs. The findings of this study will contribute to multiple ongoing debates including the adaptation of Chinese MNCs to the institutions of developed host countries and their institutional impacts.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: Irene Joe
7/31/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
Irene Joe, Acting Professor of Law at UC Davis School of Law, will present her paper, "How System Actors Respond to Exonerations."
Abstract
According to the Innocence Database from the Death Penalty Information Center, there have been 167 exonerations since the death penalty was reinstituted in the United States in 1973. This error rate for death penalty convictions is alarming and disproportionately harms communities of color. Of those exonerated, 63% were racial minorities and 52% were African American. These statistics rightfully concern criminal procedure and ethics scholars but there has been no examination of what, if any, ameliorative changes were made to the defense and prosecution institutions which allowed the mistakes leading to these wrongful convictions. In some ways, when convicted defendants are exonerated, the screens and safeguards of the criminal justice process that are meant to ensure only the guilty are punished have worked. However, for it to occur late in the stage, after a first conviction and series of appeals, it is undoubtedly proof of some sort of failure. Twenty-nine of those exonerated have been from the state of Florida alone, suggesting some sort of institutional failure exists in that state’s criminal justice system. Despite that data, no large-scale changes have come to either the state’s prosecution or criminal defense practice. This project seeks to define how the failures of state criminal processes that have led to wrongful convictions have been addressed in the state criminal process. In addition to this descriptive component, it will also provide a prescriptive claim about what processes these states should adopt in response to their failures and that other states should build into their systems prospectively to prevent similar failures from occurring.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: Ralph Madlalate
7/24/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
Ralph Madlalate, Research Fellow at the Center on the Legal Profession, Harvard Law School, will present his paper, "Afro-lawyering in the Empire’s Shadow: Globalization and Diversity in Anglophone African Legal Professions."
Abstract
It is now widely recognized that processes of globalization are reshaping not only the content of law but also the market for legal services. These processes weave together lawyers, corporations and law firms previously separated by vast geographic and cultural cleavages. Research on Anglophone professions in United States, the United Kingdom and Australia shows that as patterns of global practice shift rapidly, the profession has lagged behind social changes in gender, cultural and racial representation. Turning the focus to Africa calls us to put current processes of globalization in their socio-historical context. As part of a broader project on afro-lawyering in Anglophone Africa, this paper outlines the development of the Kenyan and South African and Nigerian legal profession paying particular attention to diversity within the Kenyan profession. With Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa serving as vital regional nodes, connecting Africa to the world, it’s important to understanding how domestics dynamics interacting with global discourses of diversity. This paper shows that precursors to contemporary globalization have been significant and in some instances have foreshadowed current trends in transnational interconnectivity. This paper illustrates, paradoxically, that despite being located firmly in an African context Anglophone legal professions has developed while marginalizing Africans. It also shows that entry of women into the profession has been gradual yet zealously resisted. This has created professions which have marginalized Africans and women. It then outlines contemporary developments in the Kenyan legal profession showing that, like the country as a whole, it is increasingly shaped by the politics of ethnicity, race and class.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP 2020 Summer Workshop Series: CJ Ryan & Meghan Dawe
7/17/2020
12:00:00 PM to 1:15:00 PM
CJ Ryan, Associate Professor of Law at Roger Williams University, and Meghan Dawe, Reseach Social Scientist with the American Bar Foundation, will present their paper, "Stratification in the Legal Academy."
Abstract
Careers in the law are notably stratified. Yet, little academic attention has been given to studying how law professors, and particularly tenured law professors—the highest echelon of the legal academy—are compensated. Additionally, the extent to which a tenured law professor’s satisfaction, or dissatisfaction, with the professor’s compensation manifests in the professor’s desire to seek employment at another law school has not been the subject of academic study to date. In this Article, we seek to address this gap in the research literature on the legal academic profession by examining salary differences among law faculty and their mobility intentions—particularly between men and women law faculty. We do so by utilizing unique sample of tenured law faculty using a dataset collected from the After Tenure Survey of tenured law faculty at law schools in the United States. Our investigation proceeds through two lenses: the economic lens, which supposes that law faculty mobility may be motivated by pay, and the sociological lens, which suggests that mobility may be determined by non-economic internal and social motivations. In doing so, we arrive at a third lens, combining elements of the first two. Thus, this Article investigates differentials in pay and determinants of mobility in the legal academy to more fully understand what factors may lead to turnover among tenured law school faculty.
Part I of this presentation will offer a descriptive demography of the tenured legal academy and discuss the ways in which men and women law professors experience their jobs differently. To better explain why this phenomenon exists, Part II will engage the literature on the gender pay gap and provide evidence of it among tenured law professors. Part III will discuss our data, methods, and the results of our study, which analyzes predictors of mobility and attrition among tenured law faculty. We find that despite the inequalities that women law professors experience in their workplaces and the dramatic pay gap between men and women tenured law professors, women are not more likely than men to want to leave their law schools. Our conclusions here are preliminary. However, we suggest areas for further study that probe the wage gap between men and women law faculty as well as mechanisms of mobility in the legal academy by making empirical contributions to better understand the changing nature of careers in the legal academy as well as the stratification that exists within it.
Zoom information will be sent to those who register. If you are not on the UCI Law Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) mailing list and would like to receive a copy of the paper, or to request reasonable accommodations for a disability, please e-mail centers@law.uci.edu.
CERLP’s Summer 2020 Workshop Series is a forum to share and discuss works-in-progress highlighting empirical research relating to the legal profession.
About the Center
The Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession (CERLP) is committed to empirical research and public engagement on issues relating to the legal profession. The center plays an important role in connecting UCI Law with regional, national, and global communities of lawyers and scholars interested in the future of the legal profession.
CERLP | GLAS | Ji Li, "'Going Out' and Going In-House: Internal Legal Capacity Building by Chinese Companies in the US"
12/9/2019
12:00:00 PM to 1:00:00 PM
UCI School of Law
1.0 hour of MCLE credit approved by the State Bar of California. UCI School of Law is a State Bar- approved MCLE provider.
The “in-house counsel movement” of the past few decades, with its far-reaching implications for the legal profession and corporate governance, has attracted a great deal of academic attention. Few scholars, however, have explored the recent global expansion of emerging market companies and their in-house legal capacity building in developed host countries. In this talk, Professor Li will discuss his article investigating the employment of in-house legal counsel by Chinese companies in the US. According to this study, the employment of in-house legal counsel, subject to multi-institutional influence, varies according to the size of Chinese firms’ US operations, their listing status and ownership structure, and the duration of their US investments. The findings contribute to several ongoing policy and theoretical debates, including those concerning foreign direct investment, in-house counsel movement, multinational companies, the legal profession, and the expansion of Chinese companies in the US and in other developed countries.
The full draft paper will be circulated to event registrants.
About Ji Li
Professor Li joined UCI Law in July 2019 as the John S. and Marilyn Long Professor of U.S.-China Business and Law. Prior to the appointment, he was Professor of Law and Zhuang Zhou Scholar at Rutgers University and a member of the Associate Faculty of the Division of Global Affairs.
Professor Li received a Ph.D. in political science from Northwestern University and a J.D. from Yale Law School where he was an Olin Fellow in Law, Economics and Public Policy. After law school, he practiced corporate and tax law for several years in the New York office of Sullivan & Cromwell LLP.
Professor Li’s teaching and scholarship explore a broad range of topics including Chinese law and politics, international business transactions, contracts, comparative law, and empirical legal studies.
CERLP Legal Ethics Schmooze
6/7/2019
UCI School of Law
CERLP | The Roles of Lawyers in Constitutional Change
3/15/2019
8:45:00 AM to 5:30:00 PM
UCI School of Law
Lawyers play an important part in constitutional interpretation and constitutional change in the United States. Even if Supreme Court Justices are the ultimate arbiters of constitutional questions that come before the Court, they nevertheless rely on lawyers and their organizations to supply arguments to explain, support, and defend their decisions. Lawyers are also part of the “audience” for judicial decision-making—those whose approval judges care about and who hold them accountable. Lawyers serve as intermediaries between the courts and the public, translating laypersons’ perspectives into legal language and explaining judicial opinions to the electorate. Lawyers also shape perceptions in other important arenas of contest over constitutional interpretation, including legislatures and agencies, the media, and popular opinion.
This conference convenes scholars who are studying various aspects of how lawyers influence constitutional interpretation and constitutional change—as organizational entrepreneurs and suppliers of arguments; as part of the “audience” for judicial decision-making; as translators and interpreters; and as suppliers and purveyors of frames that influence litigation, organizing, coalition- building, and public perceptions of constitutional meaning.
Participants Include:
Swethaa Ballakrishnen, UCI School of Law
Lawrence Baum, The Ohio State University
Paul Baumgardner, American Bar Foundation
Scott Cummings, UCLA School of Law
Neal Devins, William & Mary
Mark Graber, University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law
Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Pomona College
Kenneth Kersch, Boston College
Sanford Levinson, University of Texas
Leah Litman, UCI School of Law
Jane Schacter, Stanford Law
Christopher Schmidt, Chicago-Kent College of Law
Carroll Seron, UCI
Gordon Silverstein, Yale Law School
Ann Southworth, UCI School of Law
Mary Ziegler, Florida State University
Click here for the full event schedule.
CERLP | After the JD: Strategies and Structures in the Making of Lawyers’ Careers
10/5/2018
1:00:00 PM to 5:00:00 PM
401 East Peltason Drive Irvine, CA 92697-8000
The conference will convene scholars and practitioners to discuss the latest findings and conclusions from the After the JD project – an ambitious longitudinal study of lawyer careers, based on a large national sample of lawyers entering the profession in the year 2000. Topics will include the roles of race, gender, social background, education, law firms, and first jobs in lawyer careers, and comparisons between the AJD findings and those of a study of Harvard Law School graduates. There will be plenty of time for discussion.
View the event schedule here.