Scott Cummings

Scott Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at the UCLA School of Law, where he teaches and writes about legal ethics and the profession, social change, local government, and inequality. He is the founding faculty director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and the Profession, which promotes research and programming on challenges facing lawyers in the twenty-first century, and a long-time member of the UCLA Epstein Program in Public Interest Law and Policy. Cummings’s most recent books, Lawyers and Movements: Legal Mobilization in Transformative Times, and An Equal Place: Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles, examine how innovative legal mobilization can strengthen inclusive democracy and the rule of law. In 2021-2022, Cummings was selected as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and a fellow at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He currently serves as a Trustee of the Law and Society Association, an officer of the International Association of Legal Ethics, and a member of the editorial boards of two leading sociolegal journals. In 2023, Cummings was given the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, the campus’s highest honor for teaching excellence.