Dr Rebecca Helm

Rebecca is a Professor of Law and Empirical Legal Studies, and a UK Research and Innovation Fellow. She has a PhD in Law and Developmental Psychology and a Masters in Developmental Psychology from Cornell University, a Masters in Law from Cornell University Law School, and a BA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford. She is a qualified solicitor in England and Wales and Attorney in New York state, USA.

She completed her practical legal training at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP in London, and also practiced law as a supervising attorney for the Cornell law school clinical programs. She aims to use her own research and the research of others to promote an evidence-based approach to adjudication, and to enhance access to justice.

Rebecca conducts research using quantitative methodology and behavioral biology to examine and evaluate the operation of legal regulation in practice, and the extent to which legal regulation reflects modern scientific understanding. This has included examining the failure of legal regulation to address psychological and social pressures that can lead innocent defendants to admit guilt, the relationship between the regulation of compensated and uncompensated surrogacy and human rights, and the appropriate treatment of witness testimony in adjudication. She is also interested in the assessment of damages in cases of intangible injury, particularly as a result of neurological trauma, and is conducting work in this area with collaborators from Cornell University.

Her work has been published in both law and social science journals and books, including leading interdisciplinary peer-review journals such as Law and Human Behavior, and Psychology, Public Policy, and the Law. Her co-authored reports on surrogacy have been considered by legislatures in both New York, USA and Delhi, India. Her work has been funded by UK Research and Innovation, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the American Psychology and Law Society.

Publications 2023-2024

Helm, R. K. and Spearing, E. (in Press). Researching Law in a Virtual World. In M. McConville and W. H. Chui (Eds). Research Methods for Law (3rd edition). Edinburgh University Press.

Zottoli, T. M., Daftary-Kapur, T., Redlich, A. D., Helm, R. K., and Edkins, V. (in Press). Plea Bargaining. In P. A. Zapf (Ed.), APA Handbook of Forensic Psychology (2nd Edition).

Helm, R. K. (2024). The Challenge of 'Factual Hard Cases' for Guilty Plea Regimes. Modern Law Review.

Helm, R. K. (2024). The Psychology of Guilty Plea Decisions. Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences.

Helm, R. K. and Growns, B. (2024). Methodological and Analytical Strategies in Guilty Plea Research: Combatting Myths and Informing Evidence-Based Practice. In M. McConville, L. Marsh, and M. Langer (Eds), Research Handbook on Plea Bargaining and Criminal Justice. Edward Elgar.

Reed, K., Hans, V. P., Rothstein, V., Helm, R. K., Rodriguez, A., McKendall, P., and Reyna V. F. (2024). The Power of Meaningful Numbers: Attorney Guidance and Jury Deliberation Improve the Reliability and Gist Validity of Damage Awards. Law and Human Behavior, 48(2), 83-103.

Growns, B., Kukucka, J., Moorhead, R., and Helm, R. K. (2024). The Post Office Scandal in the United Kingdom: Mental Health and Social Experiences of Wrongly Convicted and Wrongly Accused Individuals. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 29(1), 17-31.

Zottoli, T.*, Helm, R. K.*, Edkins, V, and Bixter, M. (2023). Developing a Model of Guilty Plea Decision-Making: Fuzzy-Trace Theory, Gist, and Categorical Boundaries. Law and Human Behavior, 47(3), 403-421.

*joint first author.

Helm, R. K. (2023). Constructing Truth in the Jury Box. Criminal Law Review, 6, 399-410.

Moorhead, R., Nokes, K., and Helm, R. K. (2023). Independent Review, Miscarriages of Justice, and Computer Evidence. Digital Evidence and Electronic Signature Law Review 20.

Wilson-Kovacs, D., Helm, R. K., Growns, B., and Redfern, L. (2023). Digital Evidence in Defence Practice: Prevalence, Challenges, and Expertise. International Journal of Evidence and Proof, 27(3), 235-253.

Helm, R. K. (2023). Plea-based Sentence Reductions: Legal Assumptions and Empirical Realities. In J. Roberts and J. Ryberg (Eds.), Sentencing the Self-Convicted: The Ethics of Pleading Guilty. Hart Bloomsbury.

Helm, R. K. (2023). Adaptive Lie Detection and Perceived Prevalence of False Reports in Evaluation of Sexual Offence Allegations. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 13(1), 82-90.

Helm, R. K., and Growns, B. (2023). Predicting and Projecting Memory: Error and Bias in Metacognitive Judgments Underlying Testimony Evaluation. Legal and Criminological Psychology, 28(1) 15-33.

Helm, R. K. and Reyna, V. F. (2023). Fuzzy-Trace Theory: Memory and Decision-Making in Law, Medicine, and Public Health. In R. Logie et al (Eds.), Memory in Science for Society. Oxford University Press.

Dehaghani, R., Helm, R. K., and Newman, D. (2023). The Vulnerable Accused and the Limits of Legal Aid. In R. Dehaghani, S. Fairclough, and L. Mergaerts (Eds.) Vulnerability, The Accused, and The Criminal Justice System. Routledge.

Millar M., Aliu, L., Helm, R. K., & Chen, Q. (2023). Covid-19 and the Jury. In E. Johnston (Ed.), Covid-19 and Criminal Justice: Impact and Legacy in England and Wales. Routledge.

Research supervision:

Dr. Helm welcomes approaches from prospective doctoral students in any of her research areas and is happy to discuss research proposals.

She currently supervises three PhD students: David Teague, Suzi Rockey, and Maddy Millar. For more information on her research group, see here: https://evidencebasedjustice.exeter.ac.uk/our-team/