I am an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an Access to Justice Faculty Scholar at the American Bar Foundation. I work at the intersection of law and social sciences using quantitative and qualitative methods and legal analyses. Much of my work focuses on finding hidden social mechanisms that create inequalities in how law works on the ground. Specifically, my main substantive areas of research are:
(1) Figuring out how distributive inequalities in the civil and criminal justice systems are caused or influenced by "legal consciousness"--a term that refers to how people think about the law. What factors and experiences shape a person's willingness to use a legal aid office? To sue a neighbor? To refuse a police search? And how well does the law take legal consciousness into account?
(2) Learning how parole hearings work on the ground: how parole commissioners think about their decision-making process, which factors influence an inmate's odds of receiving a grant, and the implications of these findings for mass incarceration.
(3) Improving legal education through an empirical understanding of how law students navigate law school. My first book, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School (Stanford University Press, 2018) draws on interviews and surveys of more than 1100 law students from over 100 law schools. I'm currently working on an article that talks about how access to justice goals can, and should, transform legal education.
Like many academics, I also have other areas of interest I research and write about less regularly. These include masculinity theory, methodological challenges in qualitative research, and criminal procedure doctrine. Additionally, I have a passion for evidence law, and I recently redesigned an evidence law course centered around weekly problem sets.
My work appears in law reviews and social science journals, including Law & Society Review, Social Forces, California Law Review, and Harvard Law Review. It has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Washington State Supreme Court. I hold a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, a JD from Stanford Law School, and have worked in a number of legal settings, including the Federal Defender's Office for the Northern District of California, the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.
I've designed and taught a variety of law school, graduate, and undergraduate courses, including Courtroom Evidence, Policing and Surveillance, Law and Society, and the Sociology of Criminal Procedure. In 2018, I won UMass Amherst's Distinguished Teaching Award, which is the university's highest teaching honor.
(1) Figuring out how distributive inequalities in the civil and criminal justice systems are caused or influenced by "legal consciousness"--a term that refers to how people think about the law. What factors and experiences shape a person's willingness to use a legal aid office? To sue a neighbor? To refuse a police search? And how well does the law take legal consciousness into account?
(2) Learning how parole hearings work on the ground: how parole commissioners think about their decision-making process, which factors influence an inmate's odds of receiving a grant, and the implications of these findings for mass incarceration.
(3) Improving legal education through an empirical understanding of how law students navigate law school. My first book, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School (Stanford University Press, 2018) draws on interviews and surveys of more than 1100 law students from over 100 law schools. I'm currently working on an article that talks about how access to justice goals can, and should, transform legal education.
Like many academics, I also have other areas of interest I research and write about less regularly. These include masculinity theory, methodological challenges in qualitative research, and criminal procedure doctrine. Additionally, I have a passion for evidence law, and I recently redesigned an evidence law course centered around weekly problem sets.
My work appears in law reviews and social science journals, including Law & Society Review, Social Forces, California Law Review, and Harvard Law Review. It has also been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Washington State Supreme Court. I hold a PhD in Sociology from Stanford University, a JD from Stanford Law School, and have worked in a number of legal settings, including the Federal Defender's Office for the Northern District of California, the San Joaquin County District Attorney's Office, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.
I've designed and taught a variety of law school, graduate, and undergraduate courses, including Courtroom Evidence, Policing and Surveillance, Law and Society, and the Sociology of Criminal Procedure. In 2018, I won UMass Amherst's Distinguished Teaching Award, which is the university's highest teaching honor.