Pauline T. Kim

Pauline Kim is the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law at Washington University School of Law. A renowned expert on the law governing the workplace, she has published dozens of articles and book chapters on issues affecting workers such as privacy, discrimination, and job security, was well as co-authoring one of the leading textbooks on employment law, Work Law: Cases and Materials.

Kim has done foundational research on workers’ understanding of their legal rights, and on the risks of discrimination and unfairness posed by the use of automated decision systems and artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace. She has also made significant contributions to the literature on judging, focusing on how judicial hierarchies shape decision-making. Her current research centers on the legal and policy challenges raised when AI is used to make consequential decisions in employment, housing, and credit markets, focusing in particular on the risks of discrimination and increasing economic inequality.

She currently directs Washington University’s Center for Empirical Research in the Law, is a member of the Labor Law Group, and has served as an Adviser to the American Law Institute’s Restatement of Employment Law. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and is a faculty affiliate at the Center for Race, Ethnicity, and Equity, and the Cordell Institute. She also serves on the program committee of the Privacy Law Scholars’ Conference.

Kim earned her A.B. and J.D. from Harvard University, and was a Henry Fellow at New College, Oxford University. Before joining the faculty, she clerked for the Honorable Cecil F. Poole on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.