Executive Coordinating Committee (ECC)
The NALP Foundation selected nationally known research specialists, each with exemplary credentials in legal, academic, social and economic research to serve as members of the After the JD Executive Coordinating Committee (ECC). 
The current members of the ECC are:
Tammy Patterson ~Terry K. Adams ~ Ronit Dinovitzer ~Bryant G. Garth ~John Hagan ~Robert L. Nelson ~Gabriele Plickert ~ Rebecca Sanderfur ~Joyce S. Sterling ~Gita Z. Wilder ~David B. Wilkins
Tammy Patterson is the CEO and President of the NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and the new Operations Administrator of the ECC. Ms. Patterson directs and oversees all aspects of the work of the NALP Foundation, from its research initiatives to its publications, programs, and fundraising. Ms. Patterson represents the Foundation's interest in a host of industry venues sharing the latest information on lawyer careers. Ms. Patterson joined the ECC team as Operations Administrator in 2008.
Terry Adams is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Social Research and Law School at the University of Michigan. His research interests include the distribution of income and poverty in the United States, historical and individual change in legal careers, and the effect of changes in statutory and case law on behavior of citizens. Under his supervision, staff members of the Institute of Social Research completed the second wave of the AJD data collection in Spring of 2008.
Ronit Dinovitzer is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. Ronit's work focuses on stratification in the legal profession, and she is currently one of the Principal Investigators for the After the JD project. Prior to joining the University of Toronto, Ronit was the Project Manager for the first wave of After the JD, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School. Beyond her research on lawyers, Ronit's research extends to the sociology of crime and to the role of law in the life course of young adults. Recent articles have appeared in Law & Society Review, British Journal of Criminology, and International Journal of the Legal Profession.
Bryant Garth is Dean of Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles and Director Emeritus of the ABF. He also is one of the co-investigators of the After the JD Study. His research interests include law and the processes of globalization and the legal profession generally. His books include (with Yves Dezalay): The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists and the Contest to Transform Latin American States (2002, University of Chicago Press); and Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation, and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy (edited volume, University of Michigan Press, 2002). The most recent book, also with Yves Dezalay and now close to completion, focuses on Asia and is tentatively entitled, "Revamping Legal Virtue: Legal Strategies, True Believers, and Profiteers in the Market for Global Hegemony." He currently chairs the AALS Research Committee and also serves as chair of the Advisory Committee of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement.
John Hagan is John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and Senior Research Fellow at the American Bar Foundation. He also is the Editor of the Annual Review of Law & Social Science. He joined the ECC in 2006 as an expert in the comparative study of the legal profession. His research with a network of scholars spans topics from causes of crime to war crimes, human rights, and the legal profession. He is the author recently with Alberto Palloni of “Death in Darfur,” which appeared in the September 15 issue of Science, and of related critiques of the State Department and Government Accountability Office involvement in low estimates of the death toll in Darfur.
Robert L. Nelson is the Director of the American Bar Foundation, the MacCrate Research Chair in the Legal Profession at the ABF, Professor of Sociology and Law at Northwestern University and the Principal Investigator of the After JD Study. He is a leading scholar in the fields of the legal profession and discrimination law. He has authored or edited 6 books and numerous articles, including Legalizing Gender Inequality, which won the prize for best book in sociology in 2001. His most recent book is Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar, co-authored with John Heinz, Edward Laumann, and Rebecca Sandefur, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2005. He currently is also a principal investigator of a major study of employment discrimination litigation for the period 1988-2003.
Rebecca L. Sandefur is an Assistant Professor and Director of the Coterminal Master's Program in the Department of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate at the Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at
Stanford University. Sandefur joined the AJD Research Team in 2006. Her work is at the intersection of the sociolegal study of law and the sociological study of inequality. She has published on inequality among lawyers, focusing on prestige, income and career outcomes (American Sociological Review v. 66 [2001], Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar [2005], Southwestern Law Review v. 37 [2007]). In addition to her work with the After the JD Study, her current research includes investigations of the sources of wage inequality among professionals, of the relationship between social class and civil justice problems (in _Transforming Lives: Law and Social Process_ [2007], and of the American system of civil legal aid (_Law and Society Review_ v. 41 [2007]). Her review of research on race, class, and gender inequality and access to civil justice appears in Annual Review of Sociology (v. 34, 2008).
Joyce Sterling is Professor of Law at University of Denver SturmCollege of Law. She has been one of the Principal Investigators on the After the JD Study since its’ inception in 1997. Her current research focuses on the legal profession and legal education, particularly emphasizing comparisons of the careers of men and women lawyers. Her recent publications include: "Sticky Floors, Broken Steps, Concrete Ceilings in Legal Careers", University of Texas Journal of Women and Law 14(1) Fall 2007, with N. Reichman; “The Changing Social Role of Urban Law Schools,” Symposium Issue. Southwestern University Law Review. Spring 2007 , with Dinovitzer and Garth; and a forthcoming article, “The Cultural Agenda of Tort Litigation,” in Fault Lines, (eds.) Michael McCann and David Engel, Stanford University Press, with Reichman; under publication consideration is “The Differential Valuation of Women’s Work: A New Look at the Gender Gap in Lawyer’s Incomes,” with Dinovitzer and Reichman.
Gita Wilder is a Senior Social Science Researcher at NALP. She has been a member of the Executive Coordinating Committee of the After the JD longitudinal study since its inception. Her main areas of research interest are gender and racial-ethnic differences in academic and career achievement, and more recently, in legal education and the pipeline thereto. She has written reports on law school debt, race and ethnicity, and gendered career trajectories.
David B. Wilkins is a Kirkland and Ellis Professor of Law and Director of both, the Program on the Legal Profession and the Professional Services Industry at Harvard Law School. He is also a Visiting Senior Research Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Faculty Associate of the Harvard University Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics. His areas of research inlcude structures, norms, and practices of the legal profession. He has written extensively on the legal profession with and emphasis on the experiences of black lawyers in corporate law firms. He is the author of The Black Bar: The Legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and the Future of Race and the American Legal Profession (forthcoming, Oxford University Press), Problems in Professional Responsibility for a Changing Profession (Carolina Press 4th ed. 2002) (along with Andrew Kaufman), and more than 40 articles on legal ethics, law firms, and the legal profession in books, law reviews, and in the legal and popular press. He has been involved in the AJD study since the genesis of the project in 1996.
Gabriele Plickert is a Research Social Scientist at the ABF. Ms. Plickert joined the ECC team in 2006 in the role as Project Manager for the second wave of the After the JD Study. Aside from her role in the AJD project, she also is involved in a comparative study of the post-graduation careers of lawyers in German and U.S. cities. This comparative study seeks to mark out a parallel international track of joined study that will expand our understanding of lawyer’s lives in an era of globalized social and economic relations. Her research interests include life course studies, education, mental health, and network analysis. Recent articles have appeared in Social Networks, Journal of Gerontology, and Social Forces.