Stanford Law School professor Deborah Rhode is the enemy of complacency. This Legal Rebels Trailblazer is one of the most cited scholars in legal ethics, though she wears many more hats. She has carved out specialties in discrimination (ranging from race and gender to the unfair advantages that flow to physical beauty, often probing their intersection with legal ethics) and in criticism of legal education itself.

Not only has the decadeslong cascade of notable books and articles illustrated her ingenuity and industriousness, but Rhode’s efforts have been as passionate as they are erudite.

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“I’ve been writing about it for the more than 30 years since then,” says Rhode, who likes to occasionally expand on her old themes, though always, she says, looking for the next side excursion. (Most recent book: the laws of adultery.)

Rhode believes that most legal education is built on misguided structures and emphases that go back more than 100 years, thanks to inertia fed by complacency and vice versa. And she feels many new developments are counterproductive, such as giving more merit-based scholarships to attract applicants with higher LSATs and thus rise in the rankings, and shortchanging needs-based scholarships that increase diversity.