Ann Southworth

Ann Southworth is a Professor of Law at UC Irvine School of Law (Raymond Pryke Endowed Chair in First Amendment Law) and co-directs UCI’s Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession, with a joint appointment in Criminology, Law & Society. Her work focuses on the legal profession and legal ethics, cause lawyering and legal mobilization, public interest law, and the conservative legal movement.

She is the author of Lawyers of the Right (2008), which analyzes conservative cause lawyers and tensions within that coalition, and Big Money Unleashed (2024), which examines how lawyers and advocacy networks helped shape First Amendment doctrine limiting regulation of money in politics (recognized as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title (2024) and a 2025 Order of the Coif Book Award finalist). She has also co-authored teaching-oriented books on the legal profession and American legal practice, and has published widely on topics including civil rights and poverty lawyers, lawyers in national policymaking, and transnational conservative lawyer networks.

Before joining UCI’s founding faculty, she taught at Case Western Reserve, was affiliated with the American Bar Foundation, and has been a visiting professor at Harvard and UCLA. Her earlier experience includes clerking for Judge Stanley Weigel and practicing at Morrison & Foerster, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the U.S. Department of Justice. She holds a B.A. and J.D. from Stanford and currently teaches courses including First Amendment and accountability for lawyers/the legal profession.