Dr. Caitlin Handron Joins R&G Insights Lab as Senior Lab Consultant and Behavioral Scientist

R&G Insights Lab, the legal industry’s first-ever analytics and behavioral science consulting practice, today announced the arrival of cultural psychologist Caitlin Handron, Ph.D., as  Senior Lab Consultant and Behavioral Scientist.

Caitlin will advise our clients on practical use cases for applying psychological theory to manage and measure risk; assess and strengthen organizational culture; and design and implement more robust diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. She will also play a leadership role in shaping the Lab’s overall business strategy and in developing innovative, human-centered products and services that help our clients achieve their business objectives while also living their values.

Caitlin brings to R&G Insights Lab a practical and academic understanding of how to more effectively manage risk and build organizational cultures that promote trust, empathy, integrity, belonging, inclusivity and innovation.  She will draw on her extensive experience as a researcher, including most recently at Stanford University’s SPARQ think tank, where she studied how culture—including race, gender, social class and nationality—influences how individuals understand their surroundings and themselves in relation to others.  While at SPARQ, Caitlin also worked on client-facing projects to promote diversity and inclusion in the financial sector; and her earlier research focused on how community practices and rituals can increase accountability, reduce intergroup conflict, and support individual and collective well-being.

“Caitlin will help our clients understand which elements of their organization’s culture serve them well, and which ones don’t. For those that don’t, and especially those that create legal or operational risk, Caitlin will be a trusted advisor to our clients and our team in helping mitigate those issues and enhancing their performance,” said Amanda Raad, a Ropes & Gray partner and co-leader of R&G Insights Lab and Ropes & Gray’s global anti-corruption and international risk practice. “Caitlin’s unique skill set will also help our clients build more outcomes-based approaches to risk management, corporate culture and diversity and inclusion. Her methodologies will help our clients figure out what works, and quickly adjust to ensure that time and money are not wasted on interventions that don’t deliver results.”

Caitlin earned her Ph.D. and Master’s in Social Psychology from Stanford University and her B.A. summa cum laude from the University of Washington. She was a predoctoral fellow of the National Science Foundation; a recipient of an award from the Norman H. Anderson Research Fund at Stanford University; and a recipient of the Psi Chi Regional Research Award from the Western Psychological Association. Her research has been featured in the national news media, including in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and on NPR.

R&G Insights Lab is a full-service legal consulting group and remains the legal industry’s only analytics and behavioral science offering, uniting Ropes & Gray’s world-class legal talent with a multidisciplinary team of creative business-minded consultants and data and behavioral scientists. The Lab takes a data-driven and human-centered approach to solving complex legal and business challenges. The Lab uses analytics to drive informed decision-making; behavioral science to confront the realities of human bias and decision-making; and the principles of human-centered design to develop creative solutions that prioritize individual experiences and employee needs.  Areas of client focus include compliance, ethics and risk management; organizational culture; and diversity, equity and inclusion. Ropes & Gray is known across the globe for its innovative, client-centric approach to solving legal issues, and the Lab is a natural extension of this. The Lab’s internal team collaborates closely with a premier collective of external contributors and an external advisory council of thought leaders and industry experts spanning multiple disciplines, including data science, analytics, behavioral science, diversity and inclusion, technology, and entertainment.

Financial Times – Innovative Lawyers North America honored R&G Insights Lab as a “top multidisciplinary team” responsible for heralding “a big shift in how firms specialize and what constitutes legal knowledge.” The group’s work is also shortlisted for an Asia Legal Awards honor.

“Clients turn to R&G Insights Lab for a data-driven look at how their companies operate—and how they can do better. This group is breaking new ground by using a multidisciplinary approach rooted in scientific theory and evidence-based practices to solve its clients’ most challenging and complex issues. I could not be prouder to break that new ground with them,” Caitlin said.