Angela Melville

‘I just drifted into it’: constraints faced by publicly funded family lawyers

Abstract This paper draws on interviews with English family lawyers who do publicly funded work, and examines their reasons for entering family law. Generally, lawyers did not deliberately choose to enter family law, and instead explained that they ‘drifted’ into the field. On closer inspection, however, rather than ‘drifting’ into family law, it would appear that the careers of publicly funded family lawyers are strongly constrained by structural and cultural factors. These findings have important implications for attracting and retaining family lawyers.

Closing the gate: family lawyers as gatekeepers to a holistic service

In2001,theLegalServicesCommission(LSC)introducedanewpilot,theFamilyAdviceandInformation Network (FAInS), which recognised that family law clients typically face a cluster of legal and non-legal issues. Family lawyers involved in FAInS were encouraged to address a client’s legal problems, and then refer theclient tootherservices forassistancewithnon-legal issues. In this way,familylaw clientswere to be offereda holisticservice, with the lawyer acting asa ‘case manager’who helped match services to their client’s individual needs. This article presents data drawn from an evaluation of FAInS, and shows that lawyers did not regularly refer their clients to other services, with referrals largely being limited to mediation. We conclude that family lawyers are not necessarily the most appropriate gatekeepers, and propose a number of alternatives for providing a multi-agency approach to resolving family law issues.

The more things change, the more they stay the same: Explaining stratification within the Faculty of Advocates, Scotland

Since the 1970s the legal profession has become increasingly diversified. However, the inclusion of traditionally excluded social groups has not eradicated inequalities. This paper attempts to explain the contradiction between increasing diversification and persistence of inequalities by examining changes in the structure of the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland. We observe significant changes over the last 40 years, especially the increasing numbers of women entering the Faculty. Yet, women still face discrimination, and their success has largely been at the expense of working-class aspirants. We argue that existing theoretical perspectives, namely feminism and the perspectives of Bourdieu, as well as new insights offered by Beck, are insufficient to account for stratification within the legal profession. We call for a new theoretical perspective which accounts for both social change and persistence of inequalities, and suggest that such an approach is best offered by a feminist reworking of Bourdieu.

Conducting Law Reform Research : A Comparative Perspective

Abstract Law Reform Commissions are permanent bodies which operate in common law countries, and are charged with the task of recommending law reform. The Commissions conduct research into the need for law reform, and it appears this research is guided by a common set of broad principles. A comparison of the ways in which the New Zealand Law Commission and the recently defunct Law Commission of Canada put these principles into practice reveals that different Commissions use different approaches when putting these principles into practice. These different approaches reflect the ways in which the role of law within society and the role of the Law Commissions in shaping the law are conceived. For some Commissions, legal reform is a technical process driven by a desire for increased efficiency and effectiveness. For other Commissions, legal reform is seen as directing, rather than merely reflecting, social and legal norms, and is self-consciously aimed towards achieving the goals of social justice.

Mapping the wilderness: Toponymic constructions of Cradle Mountain/Lake St Clair National Park, Tasmania, Australia

Abstract This article traces the history of naming Cradle Mountain/Lake St. Clair (CM/LSC) National Park, in central western Tasmania, Australia, and, in doing so, will argue that toponyms constitute, rather than merely reflect, the landscape. The first official toponyms of the area were chosen by surveyors who visited the region in the early nineteenth century. These toponyms provide an insight into the European colonization of white settler nations, including the colonists’ desire to draw allegories between the newly discovered landscape and their European homeland. The surveyors were followed by local snarers, trappers, and farmers, and later by bushwalkers, and, through the toponyms given to CM/LSC, it is possible to consider the ways in which each of these groups has used this landscape. The article also examines other ways of knowing the landscape that are not necessarily reflected in the official toponyms. The construction of landscape through social practices such as naming is embedded within rela...

It is the worst time in living history to be a law graduate: or is it? Does Australia have too many law graduates?

ABSTRACT According to the Australian legal profession and media, law schools are producing too many graduates relative to the number of vacancies within the profession. This claim, however, is hardly new. This paper identifies a number of junctions at which there has been concern about the overproduction of law graduates, showing that this discourse appears during periods of major economic stress. It also shows that until the most recent episode of concern, the perception that there are too many law graduates relative to employment opportunities has not been supported by empirical evidence. In the past, the increasing supply of law graduates has been met with increasing demand. However, the legal profession is now facing unprecedented market competition and restructure, and opportunities in the profession for new graduates have declined. This still does not mean that the law schools are producing too many graduates. The current cohort of graduates is likely to continue into a professional occupation, although not necessarily in private legal practice, and there is a lack of lawyers working in disadvantaged communities.

Educational Disadvantages and Indigenous Law Students: Barriers and Potential Solutions

Indigenous students are under-represented in Australian universities, including in law school, and have lower educational outcomes relative to non-Indigenous students. First, this article identifies systemic barriers that prevent Indigenous students from enrolling in law school, including entrenched educational disadvantage that prevents many Indigenous students from achieving the grades necessary for university entry. Indigenous students who overcome this disadvantage and enrol in law schools then face higher attrition rates relative to non-Indigenous law students. Indigenous students find law schools to be intimidating, unfamiliar and alienating environments. Law schools privilege a narrow Western model of legal education that continues to deny Indigenous understandings of the law. Second, this article identifies potential solutions that may assist in addressing these barriers. These include alternative entry schemes, building pathways between vocational training and universities and engaged outreach programmes for assisting Indigenous students into higher education. Academic, social and financial support is required to address attrition rates; however, solutions need to go deeper than the provision of additional assistance. This article argues for the need to Indigenize legal education, and for the curriculum to consider law as pluralistic and embedded in power relations, and to provide the focus on social justice which motivates many Indigenous students to study law in the first place.

Conducting Sensitive Interviews: A Review of Reflections

There is no agreed definition of sensitive research (Dickson-Swift et al. 2007, 2009), although the term most often refers to research about emotionally difficult topics that require participants to face issues that are deeply personal and possibly distressing (Cowles 1998, Johnson & Macleod Clarke 2003, Lee 1993:109). Sensitive research can also involve topics that may be taboo, intrusive, stigmatising (Demi & Warren 1995), illegal and potentially dangerous (Carmack & DeGroot 2013:326, Dickson-Swift 2009, Lee 1993:4). Conducting sensitive research can present a number of serious challenges. Participants may find it distressing to discuss painful and embarrassing issues (Demi & Warren 1995, Dickson-Swift et al. 2008, Durham 2002, Johnson & Macleod Clark 2003, Owens 2006), and unless research is conducted in a sensitive manner, participants may be revictimised, for example by re-experiencing a trauma (Lee & Renzetti 1990). Sensitive interviews can also take an emotional toll on researchers. Researchers have reported feeling distressed as they listen, often repeatedly, to people’s experiences of trauma (Bloor et al. 2010, Booth & Booth 1994, Corbin & Morse 2003, Johnson & Macleod Clarke 2003, Lee & Renzetti 1990, Sherry 2013). Researchers have also experienced insomnia and nightmares, feeling exhausted, anxious, stressed and even depressed (Cowles 1999:173). Some have found that listening to multiple similar stories have left them feeling de-sensitised. Others report feeling a heightened sense of their own mortality and vulnerability ( Dickson-Swift et al. 2006, 2007). As Booth and Booth (1994:422) note, researchers can become stressed because of the “strain of witnessing and sharing the anguish of the informant, and the strain of coping with the feelings they release in oneself.” Watts (2008:5) explains that building rapport requires researchers to seek out comparable experiences, and it is this that produces emotional reactions. As she states in relation to conducting interviews with cancer patients:

Will Atkinson, Class, Individualization and Late Modernity: In Search of the Reflexive Worker

(p. 191). The author returns to the fundamental question: ‘Does capitalism, then, invariably draw out socialism?’ (p. 198). He maintains that in a historical perspective, socialism persists as a counterculture. This implies that socialism presents itself as a counterculture. He follows this with an interesting overview of critical writings by Michael Mann and Robert Archer and concludes with a note that ‘socialism is a necessary utopia’ (p. 200). The book covers a wide range of issues that have remained central to academic discourse on the subject. What would have made it more interesting and inviting to a wider section of academics is using the material to develop an understanding of the contemporary situation(s) the world over. This would call for an addition of a chapter or two. In its present form, the book is for social scientists grounded in the foundations of both socialism and modernity. It builds on the basics and provides accessible and authoritative knowledge which makes it indispensable for intellectuals committed to serious scholarship.