Fiona M. Kay

Flight from Law: A Competing Risks Model of Departures from Law Firms

Building on job satisfaction, occupational segregation and life course literatures, the author analyzes temporal dimensions of career mobility within the legal profession with a sample of Canadian lawyers. He uses a continuous-time stochastic model of the underlying processes of movement across work settings to examine factors accounting for gender differences in career paths. The findings suggest that womens integration into the legal profession remains marginal : women continue to be underrepresented in law firm partnerships, moving significantly more slowly than men toward these positions. In addition, women exit law firm practice at a rate significantly higher than that of their male counterparts. Empirical evidence also suggests that the rapidly increasing size of entry cohorts to the legal profession has restricted the number of partnerships available to aspiring associates and has hastened the departure of lawyers from law firm practice. The author documents emerging paths from law and examines causal factors pushing lawyers out of law firm practice, as well as those pulling them toward other more attractive options

Cultivating clients in the competition for partnership: Gender and the organizational restructuring of law firms in the 1990s

In recent years, the legal profession has undergone significant organizational restructuring with the dramatic growth of firms and a rapid increase in the number of female lawyers. We argue that big firms actively recruited female lawyers during a period when women were needed to fill roles of cultivating and serving increasing numbers of institutional or corporate clients. Yet despite womens contribution of legal talent to the development of clientele, a glass ceiling has restricted their opportunities to advance in law firm hierarchies. We examine two approaches to gender inequities in law firm hierarchy: disparity as economic efficiency and disparity as structural discrimination. Both approaches neglect aspects of social relations within law firms as well as social resources lawyers bring to their work. We therefore introduce a social capital perspective to unpack how human capital is enhanced and how exclusionary practices are reinforced in law firms. Using a longitudinal study of male and female lawyers conducted from 1990 to 1996, we specify several different forms of social capital. The findings from our study reveal that female lawyers participate fully in the accumulation of social capital in law firms, through service to valued institutional clientele and high billings, yet their efforts result in reduced probabilities of partnership

Cultural Capital, Gender, and the Structural Transformation of Legal Practice

In this article we clarify and modify Marxian and postindustrial predictions about the structural transformation of the legal profession, especially as they relate to gender differences in the law firm. In doing so, we utilize the concept of cultural capital and highlight the changing gender stratification of legal practice. We find that there is a growing centralization and concentration of cultural capital in law firms, so that both men and women are losing their proportionate shares of partnership positions in the profession, but with women losing more than men. The greatest growth in the profession has been at the middle and lower levels of larger firms, and women are especially likely to be represented in these locations. Women experience their worst partnership prospects in smaller firms, which suggests that male-dominated smaller firms are especially resistant to modifying the work roles assumed by men and women in the profession. We conclude that gender stratification is an important part of the structural transformation of legal practice.

Principals in Practice: The Importance of Mentorship in the Early Stages of Career Development

In this article we empirically assess the benefits of mentorship across a diverse range of extrinsic and intrinsic career rewards. Using an integrated model, we investigate the ways in which characteristics of the organization, as well as characteristics of both proteges and mentors affect the outcomes of mentoring relationships. Our study includes two samples: new law school graduates and a more seasoned cohort of established lawyers. Our results reveal the unique contributions of career and psychosocial mentor functions to early and established careers, as well as the substantial rewards of informal and multiple mentors to the career paths of professionals.

Barriers to Gender Equality in the Canadian Legal Establishment

In this paper we trace the historical exclusion of women from the legal profession in Canada. We examine women’s efforts to gain entry to law practice and their progress through the last century. The battle to gain entry to this exclusive profession took place on many fronts: in the courts, government legislature, public debate and media, and behind the closed doors of the law societies. After formal barriers to entry were dismantled, women continued to confront formidable barriers through overt and subtler forms of discrimination and exclusion. Today’s legal profession in Canada is a contested one. Women have succeeded with large enrolments in law schools and growing representation in the profession. However, women remain on the margins of power and privilege in law practice. Our analysis of contemporary official data on the Canadian legal profession demonstrates that women are under-represented in private practice, have reduced chances for promotion, and are excluded from higher echelons of authority, remuneration, and status in the profession. Yet, the contemporary picture of the legal profession also reveals that women are having an important impact on the profession of law in Canada by introducing policy reforms aimed at creating a more humane legal profession.

Developmental Practices, Organizational Culture, and Minority Representation in Organizational Leadership The Case of Partners in Large U.S. Law Firms

Explanations of minority underrepresentation among organizational managers have focused primarily on either employee deficits in human and social capital or employer discrimination. To date, research has paid little attention to the role of developmental practices and related cultural values within organizations. Using data on large U.S. law firms, the authors investigate the role of formal developmental practices and cultural values in the representation of three minority groups among firm partners: African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans. The authors find that formal practices and cultural values intended to aid employee growth and development do not “level the playing field” for minorities. Formal training and mentoring programs do not increase minority presence, while a longer time period to promotion, a cultural commitment to professional development, and a cultural norm of early responsibility are all negatively associated with minority representation. Although the pattern is broadly similar across all three groups, some effects vary in interesting ways.

ARE SMALL FIRMS MORE BEAUTIFUL OR IS BIGGER BETTER? A Study of Compensating Differentials and Law Firm Internal Labor Markets

Research on the size–job rewards relationship emphasizes extrinsic rewards that are typically more prevalent in large, complex organizations. We examine whether certain intrinsic rewards are more characteristic of small firms and shift the focus from manufacturing industries to professional service (law) firms. We find that small is not entirely beautiful. Smaller firms offer more autonomy but no more challenging work or better coworker relations, whereas larger firms offer lucrative salaries, enhanced benefits, and greater promotional opportunities. Our results challenge the compensating differential explanation whereby large firms offer superior extrinsic rewards to compensate for a shortfall of instrinsic job rewards.

Racial and ethnic minority representation in large U.S. law firms

Although law schools have seen rising representation of diverse racial and ethnic groups among students, minorities continue to represent disproportionately small percentages of lawyers within large corporate law firms. Prior research on the nature and causes of minority underrepresentation in such firms has been sparse. In this paper, we use data on a national sample of more than 1,300 law firm offices to examine variation across large U.S. law firms in the representation of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. Overall, minorities are better represented in offices located in Western states and in major metropolitan areas; offices that are larger and affiliated with larger firms; offices of firms with higher revenues and profits per partner; offices with greater associate–partner leverage; and branch offices rather than principal offices. They are equally distributed between offices with single-tier and two-tier partnerships. Distinct patterns emerge, however, when the three groups are considered separately and when hierarchical rank within firms is taken into account.

‘The first legal profession’ of New France in jeopardy or revival?: history and futures of the Québec notariat

This paper examines the historical development of French Canadas civil law tradition of a dual system of notaires and avocats within the legal profession. The two streams of practice are differentiated in terms of their professional structure, jurisdictions, education and professional training, and character of legal work. The two have also repeatedly jostled for professional control over law creation, governance, and legal markets. Notaires, originally Québecs ‘first legal profession’ and with noble standing as ‘Defenders of the Code Civil’, were largely displaced from the legal professions helm of power and influence during the 1990s, an era described as la période noire in the history of the Québec notariat. This study explores structural and cultural dynamics of contested borders between these professional groups and the impact on the careers of legal practitioners. At the core of this analysis are personal biographies in the struggle for solidarity and resistance against the decline of a noble profession. The paper concludes with a discussion of the impressive reversal of fortunes taking place for le notariat in recent years.

Professionalism and exclusionary practices: shifting the terrain of privilege and professional monopoly

English Lawyers betweenMarket and State (Abel, 2003) offers a story rich with thoughtful insight into political strategy, historical context, and individual champions and adversaries of change and traditionalism. Richard Abel examines the causes and consequences of a recent and profound challenge to the legal profession of England and Wales, likely the greatest challenge in over 200 years to its governance, self-regulation, and once relatively autonomous relationship to state and market. Richard Abel has written a magnificent work of narrative history. Abel’s reasons for crafting a narrative history are expressed with amusement in his preface to the book: “I have written narrative history because it illuminates the ineluctable specificity of politics, which can be understood only in relation to the past—and because it is a story, with colourful protagonists, drama and bathos, punctilious propriety and vulgar farce” (p. xvi). The book follows the tradition of earlier significant works on the professions with careful attention to archival documents and interviews (Halliday, 1987), national context (Abbott, 1988; Leeming, 2001), historical transitions and political forces (Larson, 1977), and cultural change (Karpik, 1999; Thornton, 1996). Abel begins with an historical account of British politics from the time of Prime Minister Thatcher, throughMajor and Blair. The historical and political account provides a context for the clashes over the Green and White Papers and Courts and Legal Services Bill. The book reveals several arenas of struggle: numbers and demographic constituency of lawyers over the period of the 1990s, barristers’ and solicitors’ restrictive practices, state funding, self-regulation, and finally, governance. Throughout the book, Abel makes diligent and provocative use of extensive direct quotations from the principal players. Each of these players, and there are many, often vocal and verbose, come together in a story rich with intrigue, much dialogue, rhetoric, critical insight, and compelling argument. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 11, NO. 1 & 2, MARCH & JULY 2004