Access to a career in the legal profession in England and Wales

Webley, Lisa; Tomlinson, Jennifer; Muzio, Daniel; Sommerlad, Hilary; Duff, Liz

doi:10.1017/cbo9781316402481.007

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Social background and its connection to elite educational credentials continues to play a role in shaping the career opportunities of lawyers in the Anglo-American legal professions (Rivera and Tilcsik 2016;Rivera 2016;Ashley and Empson 2016;Webley et al 2016). It may be that lawyers from less privileged backgrounds and from lower status law schools may be more likely to perceive they are discriminated against.…”

Section: Social Background and Professional Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace

et al. 2019

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Using quantitative and qualitative data from a large national sample of lawyers, we examine self-reports of perceived discrimination in the legal workplace. Across three waves of surveys, we find that persons of color, white women, and LGBTQ attorneys are far more likely to perceive they have been a target of discrimination than white men. These differences hold in multivariate models that control for social background, status in the profession and the work organization, and characteristics of the work organization. Qualitative comments describing these experiences reveal that lawyers of different races, genders, and sexual orientations are exposed to distinctive types of bias, that supervisors and clients are the most frequent sources of discriminatory treatment, and the often-overt character of perceived discrimination. These self-reports suggest that bias in the legal workplace is widespread and rooted in the same hierarchies of race, gender, and sexual orientation that pervade society.

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Section: Social Background and Professional Statusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace

et al. 2019

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“…As such, promotion judgments are based on certain symbols which act as proxies for quality, performance and reputation (Hanlon ; Ashley and Empson ). These symbols include forms of social and cultural capital such as accents, self‐presentation, taste, interests and mutual connections; all things which have clear gender, ethnic and class dimensions (Webley et al ). Firms tend to recruit and promote people who display the right signifiers as these are viewed as less risky options.…”

Section: The Social Structure Of the Legal Profession And Inequalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Tomlinson

Valizade

Muzio³

et al. 2018

British Journal of Sociology

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Intersectionality theory is concerned with integrating social characteristics to better understanding complex human relations and inequalities in organizations and societies (McCall ). Recently, intersectionality research has taken a categorical and quantitative turn as scholars critically adopt but retain existing social categories to explain differences in labour market outcomes. A key contention is that social categories carry penalties or privileges and their intersection promotes or hinders the life chances of particular groups and individuals. An emergent debate is whether the intersection of disadvantaged characteristics (such as female gender or minority ethnic status) produce penalties that are additive, multiplicative or ameliorative. Research is inconclusive and as yet pays little attention to moderating factors such as employer type, size, geographic location or work profile. Drawing on administrative records for individuals qualified as solicitors in England and Wales, collected by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA), combined with aggregated workforce data and firm characteristics of their law firms, we undertake a statistical analysis of the intersection of gender and ethnicity in the profession with a degree of precision and nuance not previously possible. In response to calls to broaden studies of inequalities and intersectionality beyond their effect on pay or income (Castilla ) we focus on career progression to partnership as our key measure of success. The original contribution of our study is twofold. First, we establish statistically different profiles of law firms, showing how the solicitors' profession is stratified by gender, ethnicity and socio-economic background, as well as the type of legal work undertaken by developing a model of socio-economic stratification in the profession. Second, we demonstrate that while penalties tend to be additive (i.e. the sum of the individual ethnic and gender penalties) this varies significantly by law firm profile and in some situations the effect is ameliorative.

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“…These findings are supported by the Law Society's Report (2022: 8, 11) on diversity in the legal profession which, while acknowledging changes in composition and matters of inclusion, concludes that the proportion of black and ethnic minority lawyers in higher positions remains low (see also and Whyte 2023). Recruitment literature suggests that the upper echelons of the profession prefer graduates from certain universities (Vignaendra et al 2000;Webley et al 2016) whose student body is predominantly white. This raises further concerns about the advertising material examined above, as to whether issues of race are truly tackled in the material, or whether they constitute just another commodity in the legal services market, reflecting the commodified character of the legal profession (Wilkins 2004;Collier 2005;Braithwaite 2010).…”

Section: Promoting Diversity Commodifying Race: the Ideal Candidates ...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Neo-tribal Sociality in the Upper Echelons of the Legal Profession: Issues of Race

Chronopoulou

2024

The Long Walk to Equality: Perspectives on Racial Inequality, Injustice and the Law

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This chapter examines how the Maffesolian theory of neo-tribal sociality challenges race as one of the main characteristics of legal professional identity. It investigates the commodification of ‘race’ as a component of professional identity construction attesting to exclusionary practices. Academic accounts perceive ‘race’ either as an issue of discrimination or even of diversity, therefore, inclusion. This chapter examines ‘race’ from a different perspective. It perceives ‘race’ as an element of neo-tribalism especially in the upper echelons of the legal profession in England and Wales. The use of the notion of neo-tribal sociality in the study of the legal profession resurfaces hidden aspects of legal professional identity, which could potentially amount to a renegotiation of ‘race’ as a commodity. From this perspective, this chapter reveals aspects of a new kind of legal professional identity suggestive of elements of neo-tribalism. These claims are supported by a thorough examination of a small sample of older and more recent advertising material of some sets of Chambers and some large corporate law firms in England.

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Access to a career in the legal profession in England and Wales

Cited by 9 publications

References 41 publications

Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace

Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace

Privileges and penalties in the legal profession: an intersectional analysis of career progression

Neo-tribal Sociality in the Upper Echelons of the Legal Profession: Issues of Race

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