Client Conversations with Dean Song Richardson
L. Song Richardson is the Dean and Chancellor’s Professor of Law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law with joint appointments in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society and in the Department of Asian American Studies. When she was appointed to Dean in 2018 of the UCI Law School, she was the only woman of color to serve as dean among U.S. News & World Report’s top 30 law schools. She completed her undergraduate at Harvard College and her JD from Yale Law School.
Dean Richardson’s legal career has included partnership at a boutique criminal law firm and work as a state and federal public defender in Seattle, Washington. She was also an Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Immediately upon graduation from law school, Dean Richardson was a Skadden Arps Public Interest Fellow with the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles and the Legal Aid Society’s Immigration Unit in Brooklyn, NY. A leading expert on implicit racial and gender bias, Richardson is frequently invited to speak to law firms, district attorney and public defender offices, police departments, universities, judges, bar associations, and private industry across the nation about the science of implicit bias and its influence on decisions, perceptions, and judgments. She also presents her work at academic symposia and non-academic legal conferences.
Growing up with her father, an African-American and a lieutenant colonel in the Army, and her mother, a Korean immigrant and choose Harvard over Juilliard as an accomplished pianist. Listen to how Song has been able to lead with empathy by sharing her impactful research on implicit bias, racial and gender anxiety in the legal community and beyond.
