I am an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an adjunct law professor at Western New England School of Law. I am also an Associate Editor of Law & Society Review and an affiliated scholar at the American Bar Foundation.
I work at the intersection of law and the social sciences, and my central project is examining the relationship between power, privilege, and law. I am especially interested in inequality's relationship to legal consciousness--how people think about the law. For example, what shapes people's willingness to use a legal aid office? To sue a neighbor? To refuse a search? How do race and class manifest in interactions with the legal system? My investigation of the relationship between access to justice and legal consciousness is supported by the National Science Foundation.
In recent years, I have become interested in parole hearings: which factors influence a person's odds of receiving a grant, including indirect racial effects; how parole commissioners make sense of amorphous sociolegal concepts such as "indicia of remorse;" and the broader implications of my findings for racial disparities in mass incarceration.
Additionally, I have a strong sociological interest in legal education and hope to improve law schools as institutions by developing a better empirical understanding of law school's social structure. My 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 engaged in a new longitudinal study that follows 53 law students over the course of their 1L year, and beyond.
My work appears in Law & Society Review, Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Social Forces, and many other journals, and has been 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 DA's Office, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.
I work at the intersection of law and the social sciences, and my central project is examining the relationship between power, privilege, and law. I am especially interested in inequality's relationship to legal consciousness--how people think about the law. For example, what shapes people's willingness to use a legal aid office? To sue a neighbor? To refuse a search? How do race and class manifest in interactions with the legal system? My investigation of the relationship between access to justice and legal consciousness is supported by the National Science Foundation.
In recent years, I have become interested in parole hearings: which factors influence a person's odds of receiving a grant, including indirect racial effects; how parole commissioners make sense of amorphous sociolegal concepts such as "indicia of remorse;" and the broader implications of my findings for racial disparities in mass incarceration.
Additionally, I have a strong sociological interest in legal education and hope to improve law schools as institutions by developing a better empirical understanding of law school's social structure. My 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 engaged in a new longitudinal study that follows 53 law students over the course of their 1L year, and beyond.
My work appears in Law & Society Review, Harvard Law Review, California Law Review, Social Forces, and many other journals, and has been 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 DA's Office, and the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School.