1. Faculty of Social Sciences
  2. School of Law
  3. Research and expertise
  4. Legal Professions Research Group
  5. Associate Members

Associate Members

Legal Professions Research Group

 

  1. Rick Abel is a Michael J. Connell Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus at UCLA Law, where he teaches Torts, Legal Profession, and Law and Social Change. Over the years, he has been president of the Law and Society Association, editor of African Law Studies and of the Law & Society Review, and member of the editorial boards of other journals in the law and society field in the United States, Europe, and Australia. He participated in the founding of the Conference on Critical Legal Studies in 1977 and helped organize the meeting on "Law and Racism: The Sounds of Silence." At UCLA, he has been faculty coordinator for the Public Interest Law Program.
     
  2. Sharyn Roach Anleu is Dean (Research) of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. Her research interests extend broadly across the field of the sociology of law. Her early work focussed on the legal profession, with special interest in women lawyers and gender and law. Currently she is engaged in national multi-year research on the Australian judiciary and their courts, examining emotion and emotional expression in judicial performance. Sharon is a Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor in the School of Social and Policy Studies and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.
     
  3. Scott Cummings is the Robert Heningson Professor of Legal Ethics at UCLA, where he teaches and writes about the legal profession, legal ethics, access to justice, and local government law. A recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, Professor Cummings is the founding faculty director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, which promotes empirical research and innovative programming on the challenges facing lawyers in the twenty-first century.
     
  4. John Flood is currently Professor of Law and Society at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. His research focuses primarily on the legal profession, the globalization of law, and the effects of technology in law, especially Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. He was the Inaugural Director of the Law Futures Centre at Griffith University where he developed a new research program on how blockchain and Artificial Intelligence are affecting business, regulation and law.
     
  5. Elizabeth Gorman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia.  She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University and a J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School.  Her research interests focus on inequality in professional work settings and regulation of professional work, with special emphasis on the legal profession.  Her research has been published in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Law and Society Review, and other respected journals.
     
  6. Bruce Green is the Louis Stein Chair at Fordham Law School, where he directs the Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics. He currently teaches a course in professional responsibility and seminars in ethics in criminal advocacy and access to justice. Professor Green's work with the Stein Center has included helping to establish and organize a biannual Legal Ethics Schmooze, an annual Criminal Justice Ethics Schmooze, and an annual Access to Justice Roundtable. For more than 25 years he has collaborated with the Fordham Law Review to produce an annual publication on the legal profession, and he has also often collaborated with the Fordham Urban Law Journal.
     
  7. Ole Hammerslev is Professor of Sociology of Law, Sociology of Law Department, Lund University. He has conducted extensive research on the legal profession, legal education, legal encounters, (welfare) state transformation, legal aid and legal mobilisation. He has been a member and chairman of The Danish Council for Independent Research.
     
  8. Fiona Kay is a Professor of Sociology at Queen’s University, Canada. Her research interests include the sociology of law, work and occupations, and regulation of professions. She is currently undertaking a longitudinal study examining career pathways of lawyers in civil and common law jurisdictions of Canada. She has authored numerous articles on gender and racial diversity in the legal profession, mentorship, professional development, job satisfaction, career mobility, earnings
     
  9. Sida Liu Sida Liu is Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Hong Kong and Director of the Centre for Comparative and Public Law. He is also Professor of Sociology, Law, and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. Professor Liu works in the interdisciplinary area between law and sociology, and he writes in English and Chinese. His research interests include sociology of law, professions, Chinese law, social theory, criminal justice, and globalization. Besides his empirical work on Chinese law and the legal profession, Professor Liu also writes on theories of law, professions, and social spaces following the Simmelian tradition of social geometry and the Chicago School of sociology. 
  10. Joan Loughrey is Head of the School of Law, Queens University Belfast. She qualified as a solicitor in England and Wales and Hong Kong before entering academia. She has written on the regulation of the legal profession, the lawyers’ corporate governance role, legal professional privilege and conflicts of interest. Her monograph, Corporate Lawyers and Corporate Governance was published by Cambridge University Press in 2011. She is a member of the Advisory Board of University of Exeter’s Post Office Project. Previously (2014-2015) she was advisor on the Solicitors Regulation Authority's project on professionalism and law firms. In 2023 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
     
  11. Lyn Mather is a SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emerita. She was professor of law and political science and former director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy. Her scholarship explores lawyers’ ethical conduct through empirical study of attorneys in different areas of practice. A leading scholar in the field of law and society, Mather served as president of the international Law and Society Association in 2001-02, She has published extensively on lawyers, legal professionalism, women in the legal profession, courts in popular culture, and trial courts and public policy.
     
  12. Richard Moorhead is Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Exeter and Honorary Professor of Law at UCL. He is currently on the Horizon Compensation Scheme Advisory Board that advises the DBT and Ministers on Post Office Compensation Schemes. His academic works spans access to justice, legal aid, litigants in person, professional competence, and professional ethics. As a former solicitor he has spent his career researching lawyers and legal services, and has conducted research for the LSB, SRA, Law Society, Civil Justice Council, Ministry of Justice and others. He runs the influential LawyerWatch blog and is currently researching the Post Office Scandal with colleagues from Exeter and UCL at the Evidence Based Justice Lab.
     
  13. Daniel Muzio is Professor of Management at the University of York. Daniel's research interests include the organisation and management of Professional Services Firms, the sociology of the professions, organizational and professional wrongdoing and diversity, inclusion and equal opportunity. He is a General Editor of the Journal of Management Studies and a founding editor for the Journal of Professions and Organisation.
     
  14. Elke Olthuis is an Assistant Professor in Law & Society at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. She conducts research about the subjective element professional judicial decision-making process from a legal theoretical and social-psychological perspective. In her research she uses both qualitative and quantitative methods.
     
  15. Ezgi Özlü is a research fellow at Max Planck Institute Luxembourg. She obtained her PhD from the University of Strasbourg. In her dissertation, she examined the costs policy of the European Court of Human Rights and to what extent it affects access to justice. Her research interests are cause lawyers, human rights lawyers, access to justice, legal aid and litigation funding.
     
  16. Mitt Regan is McDevitt Professor of Jurisprudence, Director of the Center on Ethics and the Legal Profession, and Co-Director on the Center on National Security at Georgetown University Law Center. His work focuses on international law, national security, international human rights, legal and military ethics, and ethical issues relating to artificial intelligence.
     
  17. Ulrike Schultz is a lawyer and retired Senior Academic at the Fern Universität Hagen, specialised in questions of gender and law, the sociology of the legal professions, European law and didactics of law. She has taken part in and organised many international socio-legal projects, has been member of the international socio-legal group on the Comparative Studies of the Legal Profession since its inception in 1980, and chair of the group from 2010 to 2014. She has also been the main organiser of several workshops on legal profession and socio-legal issues.
     
  18. Avrom Sherr is Emeritus Professor at IALS, University of London. He is the Founding Editor of the International Journal of the Legal Profession, Chair of the Hamlyn Trust, Chair of the Advice Services Quality Project and leads the quality assessment of all legal aid lawyers in England and Wales. 
     
  19. Ann Southworth is Professor of Law and co-director of the Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession at UC Irvine. She teaches and writes on the legal profession and lawyers who serve causes, with an emphasis on lawyers’ norms, professional identities, practices, organizations, and networks participated in designing UC Irvine School of Law’s required first year course on the American legal profession. Her most recent book, Big Money Unleashed: The Campaign to Deregulate Election Spending, explores the roles that lawyers, advocacy organizations, and their patrons have played in the creation of Supreme Court doctrine invalidating campaign finance laws on First Amendment grounds.
     
  20. Julian Webb is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne. He currently teaches on the core courses of Legal Method and Reasoning, and Disputes & Ethics (principles of civil procedure and lawyers’ ethics) on the Melbourne JD, where he has also taught Legal Theory and a research stream on Regulatory Theory in Practice. Julian’s research focusses on lawyers’ ethics and the changing organisation and regulation of legal practice, legal technology, and legal education policy and regulation.
     
  21. Lisa Webley is Chair in Legal Education and Research at the University of Birmingham. Her research concerns the regulation, education and ethicality and professionalism of the legal profession, and broader access to justice and rule of law concerns. She has been the Principal Investigator on several large research projects and has undertaken funded empirical research for public bodies and organisations including the European Commission; the Ministry of Justice, the Department for Trade and Industry and Legal Services Board.
     
  22. Stefanie Lemke has two decades of experience working on human rights and rule of law across Europe and Central Asia. She is Team Leader with UNDP and was trained as a judge, a public prosecutor and a lawyer in Germany while completing a PhD on human rights lawyering in the EU at Oxford, London and Cologne Universities. She is elected Secretary of the Research Committee on Sociology of Law and is appointed to several European Commission and Council of Europe expert panels promoting democracy, civic space and digitisation. She also advises the Ukrainian government on criminal justice reform. In 2021, she drafted Europe’s first guidelines on legal aid, which were approved by the Council of Europe’s 46 member countries.