Pauline Kim

Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law

Office

Anheuser-Busch Hall
Room 567

Faculty Assistant

Rachel Mance

rmance@wustl.edu

(314) 935-6403

Featured Scholarship


About Pauline 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. She 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. Professor 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. Following her clerkship, she was the Félix Velarde-Muñoz Fellow, and later a staff attorney, at the Employment Law Center/Legal Aid Society of San Francisco (now Legal Aid at Work), where she represented low-income workers. In 2007-08, she was the inaugural John S. Lehmann Research Professor at Washington University Law School, and from 2008-2010, she served as the law school’s Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development. In 2024, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Education

  • J.D., Harvard Law School, 1988
  • Henry Fellow, New College, Oxford University, 1984-85
  • AB, Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, 1984

Courses

  • Civil Procedure
  • Employment Discrimination
  • Employment Law

Areas of Expertise

  • AI Law and Policy
  • Employment Law
  • Employee Privacy
  • Employment Discrimination
  • Fairness in Algorithmic Decision-making

Scholarship

SSRN Authors Page

Activity & Affiliations

  • American Law Institute
  • Labor Law Group
  • Society for Empirical Legal Studies
  • Department of Sociology (by courtesy)
  • Faculty affiliate, Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity
  • Resident Fellow, The Cordell Institute
  • Program Committee, Privacy Law Scholars’ Conference

Honors & Awards

  • Elected, American Association of Arts & Sciences, 2024
  • Future of Privacy Forum’s Privacy Papers for Policymakers Award for “Less Discriminatory Algorithms” (with Emily Black, John Logan Koepke, Solon Barocas & Mingwei Hsu), January 2024
  • Faculty Fellow, Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Equity, 2023
  • Washington University Founders Day Distinguished Faculty Award, 2021
  • David M. Becker Professor the Year, 2019
  • International Association of Privacy Professionals, Best Paper award for Data-Driven Discrimination at Work, 2016
  • David M. Becker Professor of the Year, 2016