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This article addresses the debate about the significance of gender differences by analyzing patterns of interaction between lawyers and clients. It examines features of the language of lawyers and clients associated with the dominance and difference paradigms that are at the center of feminist theory. Talk characterized by dominance includes the control of discourse space, interruptions, topic control, and challenges. Features associated with a particular female “voice” include cooperative responses, affiliative requests, indirection, politeness, and the expression of emotion. Results show that women lawyers' talk is role behavior rather than gendered behavior, with little difference between men and women lawyers. Clients' speech is tempered by gender considerations, with both men and women clients expressing greater deference to men lawyers and women clients expressing cooperation and solidarity with all lawyers. It was mainly in reference to the occasional willingness to grant legitimacy to the clients' emotional concerns, as well as the stress on professional identity, that marked women lawyers' specific style of lawyering.

This article analyzes the process of mediatization in the legal sphere in Israel. It maps the reciprocal relations between legal professionals and journalists in Israel, and examines the impact of the changes that have occurred in the media on the press coverage of the courts, on legal decision-making and on the legal process. Interviews with judges, lawyers and journalists reveal that, despite evidence of the mediatization of the legal sphere, a number of factors serve to contain this process. We suggest the concept of “judinalism” to describe the changed arena of interaction in which there are contradictory processes of acceleration and moderation of the impact of the media on the legal realm in Israeli society.

In contrast to the traditional depiction of lawyers äs providing loyal disinterested Service to clients, analysis of one lawyer-client interaction in a legal aid office revealed that the lawyer used language to control the dient's presentation of the case t and to define it in terms of convenience to the organization rather than the expressed wishes of the dient. Three types of linguistic strategies relating to the control oftalk were examined: (l) management of structural features; (2) choice of instrumentality; and (3) management of international features. Structural strategies of interruptions and topic control served to display the lawyer's expertise, while preventing the dient from enhancing his Status. The form of the directives controlled the dient's responses, forcing him to react to the lawyer's assertions rather than servingas the primary source of Information, while the use of performatives and other elements of the formal register served to highlight the lawyer's control. Frequent challenges to the dient's adherence to the rnaxim ofquality by the use of repetitions, requcsts for outside confirmation, reformulations, repeat questions without waiting for a reply, and unfounded presuppositions combined with the other features to establish a dialogue that is very much like crossexamination.

It has been suggested that professional-client relationships have changed from the traditional authoritarian model, marked by professional dominance, neutrality and distance, to a participatory, client-centered model that is responsive to the lifeworld of the client. In addition to the effects of the proletarianization and deprofessionalization processes that have been said to diminish professional control, it was expected that the participatory model would prevail in Israel because of ideological commitment to egalitarian, solidary and informal relationships even between strangers. Nineteen lawyer-client conversations in an Israeli legal aid office were analyzed, focusing on five features that reflect the power, distance and solidarity dimensions of these models: (1) conversational openings; (2) professional register; (3) topic control; (4) the expression of emotion; (5) forms of address. Results showed that lawyer-client behavior in Israel resembled the authoritarian model rather than the participatory one. Strategies that were often associated with positive politeness were used by the lawyer for distancing and resulted in interactionally threatening moves. In addition, the sex of the participants and the constraints of bureaucratic practice also affected the model of professional behavior evidenced by these lawyers and clients.