John Bliss is an assistant professor at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and an affiliate faculty member at the Harvard Law School Center on the Legal Profession where he previously spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow. Before joining the Denver Law faculty, he completed his J.D. and Ph.D. at UC Berkeley.

Professor Bliss’ research empirically examines the relationship between lawyers’ professional identities and their public-interest values. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative analysis, he has studied how law students adopt professional selves while “drifting” away from initial aspirations to work in public-interest practice settings. He also takes this inquiry further into lawyers’ careers, examining civic professionalism among young lawyers in the U.S. and China, pro bono in large law firms, and movement lawyering in the contexts of fair housing, animal rights, and the protection of future generations. His work is published or forthcoming in leading legal and interdisciplinary outlets, including Law & Social Inquiry, Law & Society Review, Wisconsin Law Review, UC Davis Law Review, The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics, and edited volumes on global pro bono and the emerging Chinese bar.

In this podcast, Professor Bliss discusses his research, the methods he uses, how he is translating the results of his work into policy changes, and how his research fits in the NLR tradition.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download