About Leti
Leti Volpp trained first as a scientist and then as a lawyer. She earned an A.B. in Biology from Princeton University in 1986, an M.S. in Population Sciences from Harvard University in 1988, an M.S. in Legal Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 1989, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School in 1993. Those degrees set a pattern: careful empirical grounding followed by legal analysis.
Her legal career began at the federal courthouse in San Francisco, where she clerked in 1993 for Chief Judge Thelton E. Henderson of the Northern District of California. She then received Skadden Fellowships that placed her inside two advocacy organizations: Equal Rights Advocates in San Francisco in 1994 and the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project in 1995. The fellowships were followed by a stint as a trial lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice in 1996 and work as a staff lawyer at the National Employment Law Project in New York in 1997.
Volpp moved into the academy in the early 2000s. She joined American University’s Washington College of Law as a professor in 2004. Her teaching and scholarship there built on the litigation and policy experience she had accumulated in the 1990s. In 2012 she took the Robert D. and Leslie Kay Raven Professorship of Law at U.C. Berkeley School of Law, where she holds a named chair and carries a full slate of courses and research responsibilities.
Her academic profile lists both classroom teaching and public-facing scholarship. Colleagues note the range of her subject matter, which connects questions of immigration and citizenship to employment and equality. Her earlier work at immigrant-rights organizations and at the National Employment Law Project informs case studies and seminars that bridge doctrinal analysis and on-the-ground advocacy.
Volpp’s peers elected her to membership in the American Law Institute in 2009. That selection reflects her standing among scholars who work at the intersection of law, policy, and social practice. She continues to lecture at law schools, take part in academic conferences, and engage in written work aimed at courts, policymakers, and other academics.
She combines teaching, research, and occasional litigation-related work. Her current practice focuses on immigration, employment, and civil rights issues through teaching, scholarship, and litigation.
