Steven Boutcher is Executive Officer of the Law and Society Association and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research. Before coming to LSA, Steve was a Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Legal Profession at Georgetown Law Center, an assistant professor of sociology and public policy at UMass, and most recently, the Executive Director of the Center for Employment Equity at UMass. Steve received his PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Irvine in 2010. Steve’s scholarship focuses on the relationship between law, organizations, and social change, particularly focusing on law and social movements and the legal profession. He is currently co-PI on a multi-year project investigating sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace.

His own research has focused on the relationship between law, organizations, and social change. Much of his research has focused on law and social movements and he has written extensively about the institutionalization of pro bono practice in large law firms. He is currently co-PI on a large grant from the U.S. Department of Labor focusing on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination in the workplace.

Recent Publications:

• Boutcher, Steven A., Anna Raup-Kounovsky, and Carroll Seron. “Financing Legal Education through Student Loans: Results from a Quasi-Experiment in Tuition Remission.” Paper accepted at the Journal of Legal Education.
• Boutcher, Steven A., J. Craig Jenkins, and Nella Van Dyke. Forthcoming. “Strain, Ethnic Competition, and Power Devaluation: White Supremacist Protest in the U.S. 1947-1997.” Social Movement Studies.
• Boutcher, Steven A. and Holly J. McCammon. Forthcoming. “Social Movements and Litigation.” In Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Holly J. McCammon.
• Boutcher, Steven A. 2017. “Private Law Firms and the Public Good: The Organizational and Institutional Determinants of Law Firm Pro Bono Participation, 1993-2005.” Law & Social Inquiry 42: 543-564.
• Boutcher, Steven A. 2016. “The Growth of Large Law Firm Pro Bono Programs.” In Beyond Elite Law: Access to Civil Justice for Americans of Average Means, edited by Samuel Estreicher and Joy Radice. New York: Cambridge University Press.