Legal scholar Avi Soifer served as dean at the William S. Richardson School of Law from 2003 to 2020. He was dean of the Boston College Law School from 1993 to 1998 and worked on high-profile matters for the American Civil Liberties Union. After earning his BA and Master of Urban Studies at Yale University, he earned his JD at Yale Law School, where he was an editor on the Yale Law Journal. Soifer is the author of many articles and book chapters on subjects including religious freedom, rights of the disabled, constitutional history, and judgment. Harvard University Press published his book Law and the Company We Keep, which received several professional awards and is noted for exploring law’s relation to racial violence in the works of William Faulkner.