Ann Southworth
Co-Director, Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession
Joint appointment in Criminology, Law & Society
Expertise:
Legal profession, professional responsibility, public interest law, conservative legal movement and cause lawyers
Background:
Professor Southworth teaches and writes on the legal profession, legal ethics, cause lawyers, legal mobilization, and law and social movements. Her first book, Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (University of Chicago Press 2008), provides a group portrait of lawyers for conservative causes, and differences and tensions among them. Her most recent book, Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending (University of Chicago Press 2024), explores how lawyers, advocacy organizations, and their patrons contributed to the creation of First Amendment doctrine limiting the regulation of money in politics. Southworth is also the co-author of two books for use in law school and legal studies classes: an interdisciplinary textbook, The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice, now in its 3rd edition, and What Lawyers Do: Understanding the Many American Legal Practices (2020). She has published articles in leading peer-reviewed journals and law reviews on civil rights and poverty lawyers, lawyers active in national policymaking, the conservative legal movement, and transnational conservative lawyer networks.
At UCI, she co-directs the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession. She is an affiliate at Harvard Law School’s Center on the Legal Profession. From 2022 through 2024, she served on the Executive Committee of the AALS Section on Empirical Study of Legal Education and the Legal Profession.
Prior to joining the founding faculty at UC Irvine School of Law, she was a law professor at Case Western Reserve and an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation. She has been a visiting professor at Harvard and UCLA. She clerked for Judge Stanley Weigel and practiced at Morrison & Foerster, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She received her B.A. and J.D. degrees from Stanford University.
Prior Courses:
Issues of Accountability for Lawyers and the Legal Profession, Legal Profession, Legal Profession: Advanced Topics, Civil Procedure, Cause Lawyering(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)
- Reviews of Big Money Unleashed: Kolodny, Choice; Cummings, Jotwell (Journal of Things We Like (Lots), July 26, 2024; Hasen, 2024 Green Bag Almanac & Reader 246-250 (2024); Olson, Reason, October 30, 2024; Kuhner, 23 Perspectives on Politics 374-376 (2025); Boatright, LawFare, February 6, 2025; Choice Outstanding Academic Title, 2024
- The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice, 3rd Ed. (with Catherine Fisk) (West Academic 2024)
- “Integrating Normative and Empirical Perspectives in Legal Ethics Training” in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Legal Ethics (eds. Scott Cummings, Ole Hammerslev, Tamara Butter, Sergio Anzola) (Edgar, forthcoming 2025)
- US Conservative Advocacy Organizations and Right-Wing Legal Mobilization in Europe, 20 Int. J. L. Context 307-323 (2024)
- Ann Southworth, Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending (2023)
- Ann Southworth, What Lawyers Do: Understanding the Many American Legal Practices (with Catherine Fisk) (2020).
- The American Legal Profession in the New Millennium: Out of Many, One? (with Carroll Seron, Scott Cummings, Anna Raup-Kounovsky, Rebecca Sandefur, Steven Boutcher, in Lawyers in the 21st Century (eds. Richard Abel, Ulrike Shultz, Ole Hammerslev, Hilary Sommerland) (Hart) (2020).
- Ann Southworth & Catherine L. Fisk, The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice 2nd Ed (2019).
- Lawyers and the Conservative Counterrevolution, 43Law and Social Inquiry 1698-1728 (2018).
- The Consequences of Citizens United: What Do the Lawyers Say? 93 Chicago-Kent Law Rev. 101 (2018) (article for invited symposium).
- Elements of the Support Structure for Campaign Finance Litigation in the Roberts Court, 43 Law and Social Inquiry 319-359 (2018)
- Our Fragmented Profession, 30 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 431 (2017)
- Ann Southworth, Bryant Garth & Catherine Fisk, Some Realism about Realism in Teaching about the Legal Profession, in 1 The New Legal Realism: Translating Law-and-Society for Today’s Legal Practice 74 (Elizabeth Mertz, Stewart Macaulay & Thomas W. Mitchell eds., 2016).
- Ann Southworth & Catherine L. Fisk, The Legal Profession: Ethics in Contemporary Practice (2014).
- Ann Southworth, What is Public Interest Law? Empirical Perspectives on an Old Question, 62 DePaul L. Rev. 493 (2013).
- Ann Southworth, Anthony Paik & John P. Heinz, Lawyers in National Policymaking,in The Paradox of Professionalism: Law and the Possibility of Justice 220 (Scott Cummings ed., 2011).
- Ann Southworth, Students Need to Learn About The Profession They’re Joining, A.B.A. J. Legal Rebels, Oct. 15, 2009.
- Ann Southworth, Lawyers of the Right: Professionalizing the Conservative Coalition (2008).
- May 2025
Event on the role of the U.S. Supreme Court (with Professor Robert S. Chang), Sponsored by Brennan Center for Justice, San Francisco - March 2025
Invited speaker, “Freedom of Speech and the Crisis of the Political Marketplace,” Free Speech in Crisis and the Limits of the First Amendment, Yale Law School - January 2025
Invited speaker, AALS Annual Meeting panel on “More Money Than Ever: Campaign Finance Law and American Democracy” - October 2024
Invited lecture, “Big Money Unleashed,” University of Amsterdam - November 2024
Invited lecture, “$peech,” University of Leeds, U.K. - April 16, 2024
Speaker, Book talk presented by the Fordham Voting Rights and Democracy Project at Fordham University School of Law - January 6, 2024:
Big Money Unleashed: Author-Meets-Reader, AALS Annual Meeting, Washington, D.C.
- CHOICE ‘Outstanding Academic Titles’ of 2024 for Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending (U. Chicago Press 2023)
- Awarded a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London for Fall 2024.
- Faculty Roundup | June 2025
- UC Irvine Law Hosts 2025 Celebration of Books Honoring Faculty Authors
- Faculty Roundup | April 2025
- UC Irvine Law Rings in 2025 with National Leadership Roles in Law, Policy and Academia
- Faculty Roundup | January 2025
- Bite-Sized Business Law: Big Spenders: The Evolution of Corporate Money in Elections (Podcast)
- UC Irvine Law Leadership and Presenters at 2025 AALS Annual Meeting: “Courage in Action”
- CATO Institute: A Look Back at the Panic Over Big Money in Politics (Book Review)
- Reason: Professor Ann Southworth’s Book “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending” (Book Review)
- UCI Law Leadership and Presenters at 2024 AALS Annual Meeting: “Defending Democracy”
- New Book, “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending,” by UCI Law Professor Ann Southworth, Available for Pre-Order
- Media Advisory: “Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending,” Book Talk with UCI Law Professor Ann Southworth
- Reuters: Pacific Legal Foundation snags Supreme Court trifecta
- The New Yorker: Prof. Southworth quoted in New Yorker article, "Justice Alito's Crusade Against A Secular America Isn't Over"
- Washington Post: Prof. Southworth’s forthcoming book, “$peech: The Campaign to Unleash Big Money in American Politics” highlighted for analysis linking James Bopp’s fight against campaign finance regulations to his work with antiabortion organizations