Lynn Mather

Lynn Mather, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor Emerita, 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. This research follows up on her book, Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context, (co-editor Leslie C. Levin) published by the University of Chicago Press (2012). Mather’s earlier book on lawyers providing pro bono service, Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession (2009), was co-edited with Robert Granfield. Her earlier books include Divorce Lawyers at Work: Varieties of Professionalism in Practice (co-authored, winner of the 2002 C. Herman Pritchett Award from the American Political Science Association), Empirical Theories About Courts (1983), and Plea Bargaining or Trial? The Process of Criminal-Case Disposition (1979).

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. She teaches courses in Legal Profession and Ethics, Statutory Interpretation in State and Federal Courts, U.S. Supreme Court, and Courts and Social Change.

Before joining the University at Buffalo School of Law in 2002, Mather held the Nelson A. Rockefeller Chair in Government at Dartmouth College. She received her undergraduate degree with honors from UCLA in political science and mathematics. She did graduate study in law and social science at the University of Wisconsin and in anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her Ph.D. is in political science from the University of California, Irvine.