Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-767nl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-10T06:37:14.202Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Cultural Capital, Gender, and the Structural Transformation of Legal Practice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John Hagan ,
Marjorie Zatz ,
Bruce Arnold  and
Fiona Kay
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article we clarify and modify Marxian and postindustrial predictions about the structural transformation of the legal profession, especially as they relate to gender differences in the law firm. In doing so, we utilize the concept of cultural capital and highlight the changing gender stratification of legal practice. We find that there is a growing centralization and concentration of cultural capital in law firms, so that both men and women are losing their proportionate shares of partnership positions in the profession, but with women losing more than men. The greatest growth in the profession has been at the middle and lower levels of larger firms, and women are especially likely to be represented in these locations. Women experience their worst partnership prospects in smaller firms, which suggests that male-dominated smaller firms are especially resistant to modifying the work roles assumed by men and women in the profession. We conclude that gender stratification is an important part of the structural transformation of legal practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , 1991 , pp. 239 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by The Law and Society Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

This research was supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a Killam Research Fellowship for the first author from the Canada Council.

References

ABEL, Richard L. (1986) “The Transformation of the American Legal Profession,” 20 Law & Society Review 7.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard L. (1988) “Lawyers in the Civil Law World,” in Abel, R. L. and Lewis, P. S. C. (eds.), Lawyers in Society, Vol. 2: The Civil Law World. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard L. (1989) “Comparative Sociology of Legal Professions,” in Abel, R. L. and Lewis, P. S. C. (eds.), Lawyers in Society, Vol. 3: Comparative Theories. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
ADAM, Barry D., and Douglas E., BAER (1984) “The Social Mobility of Women and Men in the Ontario Legal Profession.” 21 Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ARTHURS, Harry, Richard, WEISMAN, and Frederick, ZEMANS (1988) “Canadian Lawyers: A Peculiar Professionalism,” in Abel, R. L. and Lewis, P. S. C. (eds.), Lawyers in Society, Vol. 1: The Common Law World. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
ARTHURS, Harry W., J., WILLIAMS and L., TAMAN (1971) “The Toronto Legal Profession: An Exploratory Survey,” 21 University of Toronto Law Journal 498.Google Scholar
BALBUS, Isaac D. (1977) “Commodity Form and Legal Form: An Essay on the ‘Relative Autonomy’ of the Law,” 11 Law & Society Review 571.Google Scholar
BECKER, Gary (1964) Human Capital. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
BELL, Daniel (1973) The Coming of Post-industrial Society. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
BIELBY, Denise D., and William T., BIELBY (1984) “Work Commitment, Sex-Role Attitudes, and Women's Employment,” 49 American Sociological Review 234.Google Scholar
BIELBY, Denise D., and William T., BIELBY (1988) “She Works Hard for the Money: Household Responsibilities and the Allocation of Work Effort,” 93 American Journal of Sociology 1031.Google Scholar
BOURDIEU, Pierre (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
CHESTER, Ronald (1985) Unequal Access: Women Lawyers in a Changing America. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey.Google Scholar
CURRAN, Barbara A. (1986) “American Lawyers in the 1980s: A Profession in Transition,” 20 Law & Society Review 19.Google Scholar
CURRAN, Barbara A., ROSICH, Katherine J., CARSON, Clara N., and Mark C., PUCCETTI (1985) The Lawyer Statistical Report: A Statistical Profile of the U.S. Legal Profession in the 1980s. Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar
DiMAGGIO, P., and J., MOHR (1985) “Cultural Capital, Educational Attainment, and Marital Selection,” 90 American Journal of Sociology 1231.Google Scholar
EPSTEIN, Cynthia Fuchs (1981) Women in Law. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc (1983) “Mega-Law and Mega-Lawyering in the Contemporary United States,” in Dingwall, R. and Lewis, P. (eds.), The Sociology of the Professions. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc, and Thomas, PALAY (1988) “The Transformation of the Large Law Firm.” Presented at American Bar Foundation Conference on Professionalism, Ethics, and Economic Change, Evanston, IL, 22–24 Sept. 1988.Google Scholar
GALANTER, Marc, and Thomas, PALAY (1991) The Tournament of Lawyers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
GILSON, Ronald J., and Robert H., MNOOKIN (1985) “Sharing Among the Human Capitalists: An Economic Inquiry into the Corporate Law Firm and How Partners Split Profits,” 37 Stanford Law Review 313.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John (1990a) “The Gender Stratification of Income Inequality Among Lawyers,” 68 Social Forces 835.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John (1990b) “Gender and the Structural Transformation of the Legal Profession in the United States and Canada,” in Hallinan, M., Klein, D. M., and Glass, J. (eds.), Changes in Societal Institutions. New York: Plenum.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John, GILLIS, A. R., and John, SIMPSON (1987) “Class in the Household: A Power-Control Theory of Gender and Delinquency,” 92 American Journal of Sociology 788.Google Scholar
HAGAN, John, Marie, HUXTER, and Patricia, PARKER (1988) “Class Structure and Legal Practice: Inequality and Mobility Among Toronto Lawyers,” 22 Law & Society Review 9.Google Scholar
HALLIDAY, Terence C. (1986) “Six Score Years and Ten: Demographic Transitions in the American Legal Profession, 1850–1980,” 20 Law & Society Review 53.Google Scholar
HARTMANN, Heidi (1981) “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism & Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union,” in Sargent, L. (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminish. Boston: South End.Google Scholar
HEINZ, John P., and Edward O., LAUMANN (1982) Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1963) “Non-contractual Relations in Business: A Preliminary Study,” 28 American Sociological Review 55.Google Scholar
MACAULAY, Stewart (1982) “Law Schools and the World Outside Their Doors. II: Some Notes on Two Recent Studies of the Chicago Bar,” 32 Journal of Legal Education 506.Google Scholar
MACKINNON, Catharine A. (1986) “Women Lawyers—on Exceptions,” in Feminism Unmodified. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
MACKINNON, Catharine A. (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
MENKEL-MEADOW, Carrie (1989a) “Feminization of the Legal Profession: The Comparative Sociology of Women Lawyers,” in Abel, R. L. and Lewis, P. S. C. (eds.), Lawyers in Society, Vol. 3: Comparative Theories. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
MENKEL-MEADOW, Carrie (1989b) “Exploring a Research Agenda of the Feminization of the Legal Profession: Theories of Gender and Social Change,” 14 Law and Social Inquiry 289.Google Scholar
MINCER, Jacob (1970) “The Distribution of Labor Incomes: A Survey—with Special Reference to the Human Capital Research,” 8 Journal of Economic Literature 1.Google Scholar
MORELLO, Karen Berger (1986) The Invisible Bar: The Woman Lawyer in America, 1638 to the Present. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
NELSON, Robert (1983) “The Changing Structure of Opportunity: Recruitment and Careers in Large Law Firms,” 1983 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 109.Google Scholar
ROBINSON, Robert V., and Maurice A., GARNIER (1985) “Class Reproduction among Men and Women in France: Reproduction Theory on Its Home Ground,” 91 American Journal of Sociology 250.Google Scholar
RUESCHEMEYER, Dietrich (1973) Lawyers and Their Society: A Comparative Study of the Legal Profession in Germany and the United States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SMIGEL, Erwin O. (1969) The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
STEINMETZ, George, and Erik Ohlin, WRIGHT (1989) “The Fall and Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie: Changing Patterns of Self-Employment in the Postwar United States,” 94 American Journal of Sociology 973.Google Scholar
STEWART, James B. (1983) The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
STINCHCOMBE, Arthur L. (1979) “Social Mobility in Industrial Labor Markets,” 22 Acta Sociologica 217.Google Scholar
TOURAINE, Alain (1971) The Post-industrial Society. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, Erik Ohlin, COSTELLO, Cynthia, HACHEN, David, and Joey, SPRAGUE (1982) “The American Class Structure,” 47 American Sociological Review 709.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, Erik Ohlin, and Bill, MARTIN (1987) “The Transformation of the American Class Structure, 1960–1980,” 93 American Journal of Sociology 1.Google Scholar
WRIGHT, Erik O., and Joachim, SINGELMANN (1982) “Proletarianization in the Changing American Class Structure,” 88 American Journal of Sociology (Supplement) S176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
YOUNG, Iris (1981) “Beyond the Unhappy Marriage: A Critique of the Dual Systems Theory,” in Sargent, L. (ed.), Women and Revolution: A Discussion of the Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism. Boston: South End.Google Scholar
ZEMANS, Frances Kahn, and Victor G., ROSENBLUM (1981) The Making of a Public Profession. Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar