Sex Discrimination and Law Firm Culture on the Internet

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Despite the availability of some formal legal remedies, women attorneys rarely sue their employers, and often do not challenge discriminatory behavior. This book explores this seemingly contradictory situation, where lawyers fail to employ the legal system on their own behalf. By exploring attorneys' use of legal discourse in an Internet community, Baumle examines whether the law can in fact serve as a useful tool to challenge inequality. The Internet community itself provides a protected, semi-anonymous forum in which to engage in such discourse, thereby subverting many of the barriers that currently exist to challenging gender inequality in the legal practice. This book forges new methodological territory in how to study the internet and substantially contributes to our understanding of the processes by which individuals come to think they have a right, understand that someone has breached it, and go about making the decision about whether to ask for redress. This kind of research is at the cutting edge of sociology of law, law and society, and anthropology."--Laura Beth Nielsen, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation; Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Legal Studies, Northwestern University "Baumle's ethnography of an online community for lawyers both deepens the existing scholarship regarding online interactions, as well as offers a fresh take on analyses of the legal profession. She deconstructs the prevalent cultural myth of the litigious nature of the lawyer, exploring the dispute process from an insider's perspective. The exploration of the profession wherein lies the expertise to deal with sex discrimination and sexual harassment that the rest of us are supposed to rely upon, and the exposure that these professionals are as dismayed by navigating the process of defining and redressing such harms, is a welcome contribution to the literatures of gender studies, qualitative methodology, internet studies, and legal studies."--Sarah N. Gatson, Associate Professor, Sociology, Texas A & M University. Read more... Abstract: Despite the availability of some formal legal remedies, women attorneys rarely sue their employers, and often do not challenge discriminatory behavior. This book explores this seemingly contradictory situation, where lawyers fail to employ the legal system on their own behalf. By exploring attorneys' use of legal discourse in an Internet community, Baumle examines whether the law can in fact serve as a useful tool to challenge inequality. The Internet community itself provides a protected, semi-anonymous forum in which to engage in such discourse, thereby subverting many of the barriers that currently exist to challenging gender inequality in the legal practice. This book forges new methodological territory in how to study the internet and substantially contributes to our understanding of the processes by which individuals come to think they have a right, understand that someone has breached it, and go about making the decision about whether to ask for redress. This kind of research is at the cutting edge of sociology of law, law and society, and anthropology."--Laura Beth Nielsen, Research Professor, American Bar Foundation; Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Legal Studies, Northwestern University "Baumle's ethnography of an online community for lawyers both deepens the existing scholarship regarding online interactions, as well as offers a fresh take on analyses of the legal profession. She deconstructs the prevalent cultural myth of the litigious nature of the lawyer, exploring the dispute process from an insider's perspective. The exploration of the profession wherein lies the expertise to deal with sex discrimination and sexual harassment that the rest of us are supposed to rely upon, and the exposure that these professionals are as dismayed by navigating the process of defining and redressing such harms, is a welcome contribution to the literatures of gender studies, qualitative methodology, internet studies, and legal studies."--Sarah N. Gatson, Associate Professor, Sociology, Texas A & M University Front Matter ....Pages i-x Introduction (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 1-9 Methods—Exploring an Internet Community (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 11-46 Gender Inequality in the Legal Practice (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 47-80 The Dispute Process in the Greedy Associates Community (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 81-105 Employing Litigation to Redress Gender Inequality (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 107-129 Lawyers Using Legal Discourse to Challenge Gender Discrimination (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 131-155 Conclusion (Amanda K. Baumle)....Pages 157-179 Back Matter ....Pages 181-197