I'm a professor at the George Washington University Law School, where I teach Evidence. I am also an associate professor (by courtesy) in the GW Sociology Department, Associate Editor of Law & Society Review, and an affiliated faculty member at the American Bar Foundation. Before coming to GW, I was a sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I taught courses about criminal procedure, social psychology, law and society, policing, and teaching pedagogy.
My research investigates "everyday legality": the relationship between everyday people and the law, and the implications of this relationship for people's ability to access just resolutions for their problems. I ask questions like: Why might some people go to legal aid, while others do not? Why might some people be more inclined to fight a bill, sue a neighbor, or refuse a police search? How do race and class manifest in interactions with the legal system?
Some of my other work focuses on improving legal education by developing a better empirical understanding of social and organizational structures in law schools. My book, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School (Stanford University Press, 2018) draws on interviews and surveys of 1100 law students from over 100 U.S. law schools. My current study follows 53 law students longitudinally over their 1L year and beyond.
I have also done quite a bit of empirical research on parole, drawing on my own interviews with parole commissioners in California, as well as quantitative analyses from a large dataset created through detailed coding of parole hearing transcripts. My work has investigated questions such as which factors influence a person's odds of receiving a grant, including indirect racial effects; how parole commissioners make sense of amorphous concepts like remorse; and the implications of my findings for racial disparities in mass incarceration.
My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Bar Foundation, and has been published in Law & Society Review, Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Social Forces, and other journals, and cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Washington State Supreme Court. I 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. After finishing my PhD, I did a two-year research postdoc at Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, where I did work on rurality and criminal justice.
My research investigates "everyday legality": the relationship between everyday people and the law, and the implications of this relationship for people's ability to access just resolutions for their problems. I ask questions like: Why might some people go to legal aid, while others do not? Why might some people be more inclined to fight a bill, sue a neighbor, or refuse a police search? How do race and class manifest in interactions with the legal system?
Some of my other work focuses on improving legal education by developing a better empirical understanding of social and organizational structures in law schools. My book, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School (Stanford University Press, 2018) draws on interviews and surveys of 1100 law students from over 100 U.S. law schools. My current study follows 53 law students longitudinally over their 1L year and beyond.
I have also done quite a bit of empirical research on parole, drawing on my own interviews with parole commissioners in California, as well as quantitative analyses from a large dataset created through detailed coding of parole hearing transcripts. My work has investigated questions such as which factors influence a person's odds of receiving a grant, including indirect racial effects; how parole commissioners make sense of amorphous concepts like remorse; and the implications of my findings for racial disparities in mass incarceration.
My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Bar Foundation, and has been published in Law & Society Review, Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Social Forces, and other journals, and cited by the U.S. Supreme Court and the Washington State Supreme Court. I 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. After finishing my PhD, I did a two-year research postdoc at Stanford's Bill Lane Center for the American West, where I did work on rurality and criminal justice.