Elizabeth Chambliss

Professor of Law
Co-Director, Center for Professional Values and Practice

Elizabeth Chambliss specializes in the empirical study of the legal profession, focusing on the organization and regulation of U.S. lawyers and the effects of globalization on the U.S. legal services market.

Her most recent project focuses on the future of legal education, and the emergence of new organizational models for law schools in the U.S. and abroad. Professor Chambliss was a principal organizer of Future Ed, a year-long contest of ideas for innovation in legal education, co-hosted by New York Law School and Harvard Law School (see http://www.nyls.edu/futureed/), and a founding faculty leader of Law Without Walls, a global consortium of lawyers and educators committed to fostering innovation in legal education and practice (see http://www.lawwithoutwalls.org/).

Professor Chambliss received her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin, where she also earned a Ph.D. in sociology. Interested in the empirical study of law from the start, she chose Wisconsin because it was a pioneer of legal realism in the 1930s and is still known for studying law within the context of a social system. While at Wisconsin, she served as the assistant director of the Institute for Legal Studies, a research center within the law school that encourages the study of law in action.

Professor Chambliss came to New York Law School from a four-year stint as the research director for the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, her research focused on the emergence of general counsel in large law firms, and the implications of this professional role for law firm management and regulation. She also conducted a comprehensive survey of the careers of black Harvard Law School alumni, which documents the struggles and achievements of over 650 of the nation’s leading black lawyers. Professor Chambliss currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Institute for Inclusion in the Legal Profession (IILP) and is Editor-in-Chief of the IILP Review.

She was attracted to New York Law School because of the law school’s commitment to innovative teaching and research on the profession and the strength of its Center for Professional Values and Practice. “I’m very excited to be part of the Center,” explains Professor Chambliss. “The American legal profession is undergoing profound changes that will significantly affect the careers of this generation of lawyers. The organizational settings in which lawyers practice are becoming increasingly complex, as is the regulation of lawyers. In addition, lawyers increasingly are working in multi-professional environments in both corporations and government. My goal is to bring an appreciation of these changing conditions to the study of legal ethics and law practice in a variety of settings, so that students will be prepared for the actual circumstances in which they will work. New York Law School provides a uniquely supportive context for this effort.”