Dr. Scott Cummings

Biography

Scott L. Cummings is the Robert Henigson Professor of Legal Ethics at UCLA School of Law, where he has been a faculty member since 2002. He teaches and researches in areas such as legal profession, legal ethics, access to justice, and local government law. Professor Cummings is a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, and he serves as the founding faculty director of the UCLA Program on Legal Ethics and Democracy, which promotes empirical research and innovative programming to address the challenges facing lawyers in the twenty-first century. He has received prestigious fellowships, including the Fulbright Distinguished Chair at the European University Institute and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023 to study the role of lawyers in democratic backsliding. His publications include influential works on legal mobilization, social change, and public interest law. His co-authored book 'Making Public Interest Lawyers: Time for a Crisis' examines factors that influence law students to pursue public interest careers. Cummings has a background in community development and has worked with various organizations to advance economic justice. He holds a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and previously clerked for Judge Wallace Tashima of the Ninth Circuit.

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