Background

Elizabeth Chambliss studies the organization and regulation of the legal profession and the effects of globalization and information technology on the U.S. legal services market. Her early research focused on the management and regulation of large law firms, with a particular focus on the professionalization of law firm general counsel. She also has written about the challenges facing U.S. legal education and continues to be active in debates about legal education reform. Her current research focuses on new models for civil legal services delivery, and the development of legal and methodological standards for evidence-based lawyer regulation.

Professor Chambliss is a member of the American Law Institute and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She serves on the South Carolina Access to Justice Commission and the Editorial Advisory Board of Law & Society Review. She received her B.S. from the College of Charleston and her J.D. and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of South Carolina, she served as the Research Director for the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School and taught for ten years at New York Law School.

Teaching

• Problems in Professional Responsibility (LAWS 554)
• The Future of the Legal Profession (LAWS 686)

Selected Publications

• Rural Legal Markets 12 Tex. A&M L. Rev. (forthcoming 2025)
• Claiming the South, in Positionality in Rural Access to Justice Research: Global Reflections (Michele Statz & Daniel Newman, Eds., forthcoming 2025)  
• Evidence-Based Innovation: Criteria for Evaluating Lay Legal Assistance Programs, Jotwell (September 2024)
• Three Strategies for Improving Access to Civil Legal Assistance in South Carolina, 74 S.C. L. Rev. 773 (2023)
• Evidence-Based Lawyer Regulation, 97 Wash. U.L. Rev. 297 (2019)
• Marketing Legal Assistance, 148 Daedalus 98 (2019)
• Nothing Could Be Finer? The Role of Agency General Counsel in North and South Carolina, 84 Fordham L. Rev. 2039 (2016) (with Dana Remus)