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Shauhin Talesh

Professor of Law
By courtesy, Professor of Sociology and Criminology, Law & Society
Director, Law and Graduate Studies Program
Faculty Athletic Representative, UCI Athletics
General Editor, Law & Society Review
Advisory Board Member and Faculty Affiliate, Center in Law, Society & Culture 
Faculty Affiliate, Center for Organizational Research
Faculty Affiliate, Long U.S.-China Institute for Business & Law
Shauhin Talesh

Expertise:

Civil procedure, consumer law, insurance, organizations, empirical legal studies, law and society, law and inequality, law and social change

Background:

Professor Talesh is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work spans law, sociology, and political science. His research interests include the empirical study of law and business organizations, dispute resolution, consumer protection, insurance, and the relationship between law and social inequality. Professor Talesh is considered one of the leading scholars on organizational responses to law and compliance and the relationship between insurance, regulation and inequality.

Talesh’s empirical research addresses the intersection between organizations, risk, and consumer protection laws, focusing on private organizations' responses to and constructions of laws designed to regulate them, consumers' mobilization of their legal rights and the legal cultures of private organizations. His most recent research focuses on how cyber insurance and insurance companies shape cybersecurity and privacy law compliance among private organizations. He previously published multiple articles on how insurance companies, through employment practice liability insurance, construct the meaning of compliance with anti-discrimination laws.

Talesh has channeled his interdisciplinary approach to UC Irvine. Since 2014, he has served as Director of the Law & Graduate Studies Program. In that role, he advises all concurrent degree students, with special attention to those pursuing a JD and PhD simultaneously. He is also a co-founding member of the Law, Society and Culture Emphasis program.

Professor Talesh’s prominence as a scholar has led to elected and appointed leadership positions in national organizations. He Chaired the Sociology of Law Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) in 2020-21. In 2019-20, he served as Chair-Elect and Program Chair at the ASA Annual Meeting, and he previously served as elected Secretary/Treasurer of the section 2017-2019. He was also elected Chair of the American Association of Law School’s Insurance Law Section in 2019, after previously serving as elected Secretary, Treasurer, and Chair-Elect. From 2018-2020, he served on the Editorial Board for Law & Social Inquiry.

In 2019, Professor Talesh was selected for the inaugural class of UC Irvine Beall Applied Innovation Faculty Innovation Fellows, a program established “to recognize faculty who have a record of translating their society-impacting research as well as to make them ambassadors for UCI’s innovation culture.” In 2022, Professor Talesh was elected a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation (ABF). Membership is limited to just one percent of lawyers licensed to practice in each jurisdiction. Members are nominated by their peers and selected by the ABF Board. The ABF Fellows is a global honorary society that recognizes attorneys, judges, law faculty and legal scholars whose public and private careers have demonstrated outstanding dedication to the highest principles of the legal profession and to the welfare of their communities. ABF Fellows hail from nearly 40 countries and hold a wide variety of influential roles. In spring, 2022, Professor Talesh was named the William T. Barker Distinguished Visiting Professor of Insurance Law at UC Berkeley Law School. He has also been a Visiting Professor at Sciences-Po, Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies, in Paris, France.

Talesh’s scholarship has appeared in multiple law and peer-reviewed social science journals including Law and Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and Law & Policy, and has won multiple awards in Sociology, Political Science and Law & Society.

Talesh regularly teaches Procedural Analysis, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Law, and Insurance Law & Policy. He was elected by UCI Law Students 1L Professor of the Year in 2018-19, 2020-21 and 2021-22. 

(Log in to view full course descriptions in the UCI Law Course Catalog)

Book:

  • Shauhin Talesh, Research Handbook on Modern Legal Realism, (with E. Mertz & H. Klug) (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2021)

Publications:

Prof. Talesh's Scholarly Papers on SSRN

  • April 2025
    Presentation on forthcoming book, Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators, New York University Abu Dhabi 

    Presentation on forthcoming book, Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators, Digital Capital and Political Systems: Shaping Inequalities in a Technological Age Conference, University of Sharjah, UAE

    Faculty speaker, “The Endogenous Construction of Law: How Cyber Insurance Companies Construct the Meaning of Privacy Law and Cybersecurity Compliance,” Digital Capital and Political System: Shaping Inequalities in a Technological Age (Research Symposium), University of Sharjah, UAE

    Presenter on forthcoming book, “Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators,” Faculty Workshop at New York University Abu Dhabi 

    Presenter on forthcoming book, “Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators,” Faculty Workshop at Southwestern Law School 

    Presenter on forthcoming book, “Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators,” NYU Law School Cybersecurity Innovation Law and Policy Workshop (virtual)
  • March 6, 2025
    Workshop session on article, “Insuring Cyber Insecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators of Consumer Protection,” Consumer Law Scholars Conference, Berkeley Law Center for Consumer Law & Economic Justice and Boston University School of Law
  • January 30, 2025
    Presenting “Insuring Cyberinsecurity: Insurance Companies as Symbolic Regulators” at the Yale Law School, Information Society Project Faculty Workshop
  • January 17, 2025
    Presenting at the American Bar Foundation/JBF Access to Justice Faculty Scholars Workshop at Arizona State University
  • October 2024
    Talk on “New Legalism and Legal Education,” closing remarks and panel moderation at the Widening the Lens of Justice Conference, hosted by Harvard Law’s Center on the Legal Profession and the American Bar Foundation 
  • October 2024
    Speaker, “New Legal Realism and Legal Education”; Moderator, “NLR & Legal Education II: Pluralizing Professional Identities and Purposes”; and Speaker, Closing Remarks at the conference, Widening the Lens of Justice: A 20th Anniversary New Legal Realism Conference on Inclusion, 'Bleached Out' Identity, and Ethics in Legal Education, Harvard Law School
  • September 2023:
    Presenter, Insurance and Reinsurance Innovation Institute, “Thematic Debate on Cyber Insurance", FGV Rio School of Law
  • September 2023:
    Presenter, 38th Hemispheric Insurance Conference – FIDES Rio 2023, hosted by The National Confederation of Insurance Companies (CNseg) and Inter-American Federation of Insurance Companies, Rio de Janeiro
  • June 2023:
    Presenter, “The Technologization of Insurance: An Empirical Analysis of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence’s Impact on Cybersecurity and Privacy,” Committee on Insurance and Pension Regulation, Insurance Institute, FGV Direito Rio School of Law.
  • June 2023:
    Presenter, “Publishing in Socio-Legal Friendly Journals: Meet the Editors and Get Advice on Publishing,” Law and Society Association Annual Meeting.
  • June 2023:
    Presenter, “Addressing inequality issues in the peer-reviewed publishing world,” Law and Society Association Annual Meeting
  • February 2023:
    Presenter, “The Technologization of Insurance: An Empirical Analysis of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence’s Impact on Cybersecurity and Privacy,” British Insurance Law Association, (invited).
  • February 2023
    Presenter,  “A Theoretically-Informed Empirical Research Approach Toward Studying Law,” University of Wisconsin, Madison, School of Law, Faculty Development Workshop Series on How to Study Law (invited).
  • Feb 14, 2023:
    A Theoretically-Informed Empirical Research Approach Toward Studying Law, Faculty Development Workshop at the Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison School of Law
  • Association of American Law Schools, Teacher of the Year, 2022
  • ABF Fellow, American Bar Foundation (2022-present)
  • UC Irvine School of Law, 1L Professor of the Year, 2018-2019, 2020-2021, 2021-22
  • Beall Faculty Innovation Faculty Fellow (inaugural class), UCI Beall Applied Innovation (2019-present)
  • Editorial Board, Law & Social Inquiry, 2018-present
  • American Sociological Association, Sociology of Law Section Chair (2020-2021) (elected)
  • American Association of Law Schools, Insurance Law Section, Chair, (2019-2020) (elected)
  • Visiting Scholar, Institut d'études politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), Paris, France, (June-July, 2017)
  • American Association of Law Schools, Insurance Law Section, Chair Elect, (2018-2019) (elected)
  • Elected Secretary/Treasurer, American Sociological Association, Sociology of Law Section, 2017-2019
  • Distinguished Teaching Award Nominee, UC Irvine School of Law, 2013-2014; 2014-2015
  • Best Graduate Student Paper, Law & Society Association, 2011
  • Best Graduate Student Paper, American Sociological Association, Sociology of Law, 2011
  • Best Graduate Student Paper, American Political Science Association, Law & Courts, 2010