Women in Law

Description

Women in Law is an insightful and provocative study of the paradoxes women face as they live the realities beyond the new mystique of a high-powered career. There is a lesson to be learned from this fascinating account of women lawyers. Although the number of women in this traditionally male-dominated profession has grown tremendously in the past decade — and the clearly illegitimate formal barriers to their success have been removed — insidious and unconscious brakes on their careers remain. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein tells the whole story of women lawyers: from the humiliating “Ladies’ Days” at Ivy League law schools to the challenges facing today’s gray-flannel women lawyers on Wall Street. When she was a sociology graduate student in the 1960s Cynthia Fuchs Epstein studied women lawyers as an example of women who were taking nontraditional roles: professionals in a male environment, overcoming discrimination and isolation, toiling in the silent worlds of research and domestic law. Comparing those pioneers with the new generation, Epstein shows that the “new women of law” have the advantage of numbers and a broader conception of the role of law in society. Many more are successfully engaged in nontraditional areas for women such as corporate and litigation work. But women lawyers are still subject to the traditional cross fires of professional and private life the subtle messages of resistance from antagonistic colleagues. Epstein first locates women lawyers: who they are, where they work, and what they do. Tracing careers from application to law school, through the student experience, the job search, and the effort to 'make partner' she records, often through the voices of the women interviewed over the past decade, how the practice of law impinges on all aspects of the lives of women. But she also shows how women are changing society and breaking new ground in law through their legal careers: in traditional firms, as law school faculty, in government, and in public interest law. The problems women face must ultimately be faced by the men with whom they work and live. Women in Law defines these problems, shows how people have solved them, and explores the larger issues they raise. PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION Encountering the Legal Establishment: The New Women of Law 3 I. BACKGROUND 1. Law: The Changing Context 13 2. Where They Came From and Why They Chose the Law 23 II. LAW SCHOOL 3. Getting Into Law School 49 4. Going to Law School 60 III. THE MANY PRACTICES OF LAW 5. Breaking In: Dark Days of Discrimination and the Beginning of a New Era 79 6. Patterns of Practice 96 7. Government Practice 112 8. Poverty Law and the Public Interest 120 9. Feminist Law Firms and Feminist Law Practice 130 10. Small Private Practices and Husband-Wife Law Partnerships 162 11. Women in the Legal Establishment: Wall Street and the Large Corporate Firms 175 12. Women Law Professors 219 13. Benchmarks: Women in the Judiciary 237 14. Professional Associations 247 IV. OUTSIDERS WITHIN 15. Ambivalence and Collegiality 265 V. MANAGING AND COPING 16. The Self: Confidence and Presentation 305 17. So Many Hours in the Day 315 VI. PRIVATE LIVES 18. Husbands, Wives, and Lovers 329 19. Children 358 CONCLUSION: PROGNOSIS OF PROGRESS 380 APPENDIX: METHODOLOGY 387 NOTES 401 INDEX 423