Before moving to the University of Toronto, he taught sociology and law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Liu has conducted extensive empirical research on China’s legal reform and legal profession, including the globalization of corporate law firms, the political mobilization of criminal defense lawyers, the feminization of judges, and the career mobility of law practitioners. In addition to Chinese law, he also writes on sociolegal theory and general social theory. Liu is the author of three books in Chinese and English, most recently, Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at Work (with Terence C. Halliday, Cambridge University Press, 2016). He received his LL.B. degree from Peking University Law School and his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago.