Evaluations that combine social science and law have tremendous potential to illuminate the effects of governmental policies and yield insights into how effectively policy makers' efforts achieve their aims. This potential is infrequently achieved, however, because such interdisciplinary research contains often overlooked substantive and methodological challenges. This article offers detailed guidance for conducting successful multidisciplinary evaluations that use legal data. It addresses major issues that commonly arise and offers practical solutions based both on the authors' extensive experience and recommended best practices developed in concert with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Public Health Law Research Program.

The efforts of the American Psychological Association to influence judicial policy-making by filing amicus curiae briefs were examined. Effectiveness was assessed with regard to advancing the professional interests of the organization’s membership, increasing the perceived utility of psychology as a basis for government policy decisions, and fostering the adoption of social policies consonant with the fundamental precepts of organized psychology. Filing amicus briefs in strategic legal cases was found to be an effective means of pursuing these objectives.

The current state of legally oriented social science research is a mixture of success and unfulfilled promise. Despite numerous indications that the relationship between social science and law continues to improve, dissatisfaction persists because a true empirical jurisprudence has not developed and because most research remains focused on a narrow range of legal topics. While commentators beseech their colleagues to expand the scope of inquiry, a variety of drawbacks still deter all but an intrepid few. Inhibiting factors include uncertainty about whether any particular study will influence policy making, and a professional reward structure that discourages interdisciplinary empirical research.

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