UCI NEWS  — Swethaa S. Ballakrishnen, assistant professor of law and co-director, Center for Empirical Research on the Legal Profession at the UCI School of Law is the principal investigator of a team awarded a $511,230 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to fund a project titled: “Diversity and Networking in Law School: Are Law Students from Diverse Backgrounds Disadvantaged?” Ballakrishnen is the first full-time UCI Law faculty member to receive an NSF grant. Ballakrishnen is joined on the project by co-principal investigators Prof. Anthony Paik of University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Carole Silver, professor of Global Law & Practice at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law; and Steven Boutcher, executive officer of the Law and Society Association and senior research fellow at the Institute for Social Science Research at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Networking is considered a key component of the law school experience and will lead to success in law school and career development. However, students from diverse backgrounds – race, gender, sexual orientation and class – may not have the same level of access to “resource-rich” social networks in law school. These “network inequalities” may shape the value of legal education across different groups of students and impact student experiences and outcomes.