Law doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and neither does good research: Faculty collaboration earns national honor

The project brought together legal scholarship, management and decision-making perspectives to explore how people weigh competing values when making decisions involving the law. Lingwall and Dinkel brought expertise in legal studies and statistics, while Ames contributed a management perspective that helped the team examine how values influence real-world decision-making.

The award itself is incredibly prestigious, and according to the ALSB is granted to the paper that displays excellence in legal scholarship.

"In the United States, this is the biggest association for this field, and this is the premier research award in that field," Lingwall said. "So it feels pretty good."

For Ames, the recognition was especially meaningful because it represented an opportunity to contribute to a field outside his academic background of ethics.

"I really love it when we cross boundaries, when we go from one discipline to another, because that's how real life really is," Ames said. 'That's what makes for great research, when we can take viewpoints and perspectives from different disciplines and bring them together to solve and talk about a problem in a unique way."

The award was the team's second recognition for the paper, following an award at a regional conference. For the researchers, the award affirmed the value of asking new questions and approaching complex problems from more than one perspective.

Crossing disciplines, strengthening research

The paper's recognition reflects a collaboration that pushed each researcher beyond the boundaries of his own academic specialty.

"Being able to do statistical work in my field raises the bar for the paper to begin with," Lingwall said. "But then being able to combine empirical work, and then bring in outside perspectives together makes for a strong paper."

The resulting paper looked beyond legal compliance alone to explore how people balance competing priorities, including physical safety, financial security and employee well-being.

Bringing in a professor from a different department offered a perspective that legal scholars such as Lingwall and Dinkel might not have otherwise considered.

"Justin has knowledge of management decision making that isn't typically considered in legal studies," Lingwall said. "I thought it was a great contribution to be able to say, here's literature on decision-making."

The collaboration also challenged the researchers to learn from one another. Ames described gaining a new appreciation for the precision of legal scholarship, from its detailed sourcing to its approach to writing and research methodology.

"I think it helped raise my game," Ames said. "It gave me perspective, too, into how they see certain things, even the review process."

That kind of partnership is one reason interdisciplinary research matters. Scholars can bring their specialized knowledge to a shared question while learning to see the problem through someone else's lens.

Broader implications

The paper's findings also carry implications beyond academia. The researchers found that people consider a range of values when navigating workplace decisions, suggesting that legal advice is most useful when it accounts for the priorities and circumstances of the people receiving it.

"You can't counsel people about the law in a vacuum," Lingwall said. "Because people's decision-making doesn't operate in a vacuum."

That principle captures the broader purpose of the research: helping legal professionals understand the values that shape their clients' decisions and helping organizations make choices that reflect more than a narrow interpretation of compliance.

Ames saw another encouraging takeaway in the findings. The research provided optimism, even amid concerns about declining trust in business.

"To see people speak regularly and passionately about how they do care about safety and they do care about the welfare of employees and other people; that restored a little bit of faith," said Ames. "We need to celebrate the people who do bring values to the business."

For the researchers, that is part of what makes the work meaningful. By combining their expertise, they produced research that not only earned national recognition within legal studies but also offered practical insight into how people make decisions, how organizations define their values and how professionals can better serve the people who rely on them.

By Morgan Reah

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