Stone Inequality & Social Policy Seminar: Rachel A. Potter

Lawyering Up the Administrative State

Rachel Augustine Potter, Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Virginia

Abstract: Lawyers are powerbrokers in American society, wielding outsized influence in courtrooms, boardrooms, and in the halls of Congress. Yet, lawyers’ influence in the administrative state—a venue where the legal profession comprises a growing share of the workforce—has gone largely unexamined. In this paper, I evaluate the role of lawyers in the administrative state. Building on literature from management science and using a new dataset of the legal composition of federal agencies, I evaluate how an increased presence of lawyers affects agency compliance behavior and rulemaking output. The findings parallel research on lawyers in corporations: agencies with more lawyers are more likely to comply with even obscure procedural requirements and to minimize risk-taking when it comes to promulgating new regulations. Overall, these results suggest that the growing reliance on lawyers may foster proceduralism within agencies and that the professional composition of agencies is a key element of administrative design. 

Rachel Augustine Potter is an Associate Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, a Senior Fellow at the Miller Center for Public Affairs, and a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert on the administrative state, bureaucratic politics, and executive branch policymaking. Her award-winning first book, Bending the Rules: Procedural Politicking in the Bureaucracy (University of Chicago Press, 2019), examines how bureaucrats use procedural tools to shape the content of federal regulations. Her second book, Going Private: Outsourcing the Administrative State (University of Chicago Press, 2026), examines the consequences of government reliance on private contractors to perform core administrative functions. Her other research has appeared in political science, public policy, public administration, and administrative law journals. Dr. Potter has served as an expert witness before Congress, a consultant to the Administrative Conference of the United States, and as President of the Midwest Public Administration Caucus. Before becoming a political scientist, she worked at the White House Office of Management and Budget, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, and the German Federal Ministry of the Interior.