Meera E. Deo is Director of the Law School Survey of Student Engagement (LSSSE) at Indiana University-Bloomington, The Honorable Vaino Spencer Professor of Law at Southwestern Law School, and Affiliated Faculty at the American Bar Foundation, where she was the 2020-2021 Neukom Chair in Diversity and Law. She earned a BA from UC Berkeley, a JD from the University of Michigan Law School, and a PhD in Sociology from UCLA.  

Professor Deo’s research merges jurisprudence with empirical methods to interrogate hierarchies in legal education and the legal profession. Her book, Unequal Profession: Race and Gender in Legal Academia (Stanford University Press, 2019) shares original empirical findings of intersectional raceXgender effects on law faculty experiences. Another mixed-method study investigated pandemic-era inequities in legal education, especially for vulnerable populations of faculty and students. Her current research explores institutional and individual strategies to improve belonging and wellbeing in legal education and the legal profession.  

Professor Deo has been active in LSA since joining legal academia in 2009. She has presented regularly for various CRNs, including Feminist Legal Theory, Critical Research on Race and the Law, Legal Education, and New Legal Realism. She also frequently gathers speakers and organizes panels for LSA Annual Meetings. From 2019 to 2021, she served on the LSA Diversity Committee.  

The National Science Foundation, Law School Admission Council, Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, and AccessLex Institute have supported Professor Deo’s research. She has served as a Senate-appointed member of the California Commission on Access to Justice, Chair of the AALS Section on Law and the Social Sciences, Editorial Board member for Law & Social Inquiry, Litigation Committee Member for AAUP, and a consultant to many law firms, law schools, and universities. In 2020, she was elected to the American Law Institute.