Lisa Webley

Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession

The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) ‘temporally embedded’ conceptualization of agency as having past, current and future elements. We identify six career strategies, which relate to different career points. They are assimilation, compromise, playing the game, reforming the system, location/relocation and withdrawal. We find that five of the six strategies tend to reproduce rather than transform opportunity structures in the legal profession. The overall picture is one of structural reproduction (rather than transformation) of traditional organizational structure and practice. The theoretical frame and empirical data analysis presented in this article accounts for the rarity of structural reform and goes some way towards explaining why, even in contexts populated by highly skilled, knowledgeable agents and where organizations appear committed to equal opportunities, old opportunity structures and inequalities often endure.

Gate-keeper, supervisor or mentor? The role of professional bodies in the regulation and professional development of solicitors and family mediators undertaking divorce matters in England and Wales

This article sets out findings from a grounded theory analysis of the professional training and accreditation requirements for solicitors, accredited specialist family law solicitors and family mediators in England and Wales as set by their professional bodies: the Law Society of England and Wales and the then UK College of Family Mediators. 1 It examines the roles that the professional bodies ascribe to themselves with respect to their profession and their members, considering the extent to which professional regulation fulfils gate-keeping, supervisory or mentoring roles. In conclusion it suggests that in the light of the cues transmitted by the professional bodies in England and Wales in respect of divorce cases and clients, the very nature of professional practice as a family law solicitor and as a family mediator is being transformed into a form of hybrid practice that draws upon two radically different epistemological traditions, with important consequences for solicitors, family mediators and their clients.2 Thus, it challenges the largely accepted dichotomy of adversarial divorce practice on the part of solicitors in opposition to the consensus-based approach practised by family mediators.

Legal Ethics in England and Wales

This article explores the ethical regulation of solicitors and compares it to that of doctors. It summarises the findings for England and Wales from an EU funded project of legal ethics.

United Kingdom: What Robinson v Solicitors Regulation Authority Tells Us about the Contested Terrain of Race and Disciplinary Processes

There is a not so subtle racial undercurrent to the debate surrounding solicitor dishonesty, the disciplinary process, the role of the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) and the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) in England and Wales. The discussion appeared to emerge from two different standpoints: the suggestion that solicitors from certain non- White backgrounds were more likely to be dishonest (racial stereotyping of dishonesty); and the suggestion that the Law Society and then the SRA (the solicitor regulator) were more likely to investigate, take action against and make findings against solicitors from non-White backgrounds (institutional racial discrimination). The debate then developed as a more sophisticated one attributable to factors beyond race, intersecting firm type, client type and case type alongside the ethnicity and/or nationality of the solicitor to posit a series of factors that may contribute to the reason why a disproportionate number of non- White solicitors face regulatory investigation and have findings made against them. Of the 390 solicitors brought before the SDT in 2011, 35% were from Black, Asian or Minority Ethnic backgrounds (BAME) against a population of 14% BAME solicitors who hold practising certificates. This short case note will consider this debate in the light of the case of Robinson v Solicitors Regulation Authority, in which the charge of discrimination was raised by the appellant solicitor as part of his challenge to the severity of the sanction imposed against him by the SDT.

Stumbling Blocks in Empirical Legal Research: Case Study Research

This article examines the main assumptions and theoretical underpinnings of case study method in legal studies. It considers the importance of research design, including the crucial roles of the academic literature review, the research question and the use of rival theories to develop hypotheses and the practice of identifying the observable implications of those hypotheses. It considers the selection of data sources and modes of analysis to allow for valid analytical inferences to be drawn in respect of them. In doing so it considers, in brief, the importance of case study selection and variations such as single or multi case approaches. Finally it provides thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses associated with undertaking socio-legal and comparative legal research via a case study method, addressing frequent stumbling blocks encountered by legal researchers, as well as ways to militate them. It is written with those new to the method in mind.

Access to a Career in the Legal Profession in England and Wales: Race, Class, and the Role of Educational Background

Much attention is currently focused on equality and diversity within the legal profession in England and Wales, not least because the profile of law graduates has markedly changed and diversified over the past 20 years, and yet the senior legal profession has yet to reflect the increasing number of women and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) entrants over that period. A body of previous research evidence from around the UK indicates that social educational background has a major role to play in the extent to which aspiring lawyers gain entry into, progress, and succeed within the legal profession (Shiner, 1994; Shiner et al. 1999; Shiner et al., 2000; Nicolson, 2005; Thomas, 2000, Sommerlad, 2008). Law Society statistical evidence indicates that aspiring BAME lawyers are concentrated in the less prestigious parts of the higher education sector, and it has been argued that this places them at a disadvantage as regards entry into the legal profession. This chapter is informed by data collected for a study of diversity in the legal profession in England and Wales which was commissioned by the Legal Services Board (Sommerlad et al., 2010). In that study we used biographical interviews (77) to consider the barriers and choices that faced women and BAME lawyers and would-be lawyers. Using a Bourdeusian analysis, we examine the extent to which participants considered that their educational background pre-University and their course of study and institution at University level had an impact on their legal career. It explores this argument through the various themes that emerged from the data, including the profession’s reliance symbolic and social capital for entry into the legal profession. In doing so, we illustrate a number of structural factors which inhibit the development and utilization of talent due to value attribution by dominant groups in the legal profession.

A Spotlight on Judicial Regulation in Australia

(2014). A Spotlight on Judicial Regulation in Australia. Legal Ethics: Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 299-312.

Complete public law : text, cases, and materials

Complete Public Law: Texts, Cases, and Materials combines clear explanatory text and practical learning features with extracts from a wide of primary and secondary materials. This book has been carefully structured with the needs of undergraduate courses in mind. Opening with consideration of basic constitutional principles (in which no previous knowledge is assumed), the authors move on to cover all other essential areas, before closing with extensive consideration of the principles and procedures of judicial review. The two-colour text design allows students to instantly identify the primary materials, and facilitates easy navigation around the book.

Divorce Solicitors and Ethical Approaches - The Best Interests of the Client and/or the Best Interests of the Family?

This article explores the changing nature of divorce solicitor ethics in England and Wales. It considers solicitors duties to the client, any children of the family and wider family members.

Families and violence: Making difference(s) visible

Violent attacks on the public are almost unanimously condemned by the community, both informally by individuals and formally and collectively by the state through legal sanction, as a collective expression of societal distaste. Victims are given a civil right to seek redress for loss experienced as a consequence of an attack or attacks, in addition to injunctive relief for persistent or potentially persistent incidents. Society also seeks to regulate violence by the imposition of criminal sanctions against perpetrators of violence. This is its ultimate expression of revulsion through its tripartite concerns to punish, rehabilitate and deter future oþ ending. This survey of the legal response to violence begins to look less than straightforward when considered in the light of violent attacks on family members. Many commentators would express some reservations about the usefulness of civil remedies and criminal sanctions in domestic violence incidents and consider the civil law as merely a source of an injunctive remedy to prevent violence and the criminal law as a tool that is ill suited to domestic disputes. At least, of course, until the dispute leads to a loss of life. Legislation, case law and procedure, however, continue to dominate undergraduate legal education, with little time for an examination of the role of law in the context of domestic violence, or of ways in which the law could better suit the needs of abuser or abused. This article seeks to examine a number of the assumptions which underpin our treatment of domestic violence within the context of a law school undergraduate programme. It brie ̄ y considers the way in which domestic violence is taught by family lawyers in the context of divorce and cohabitation and the juxtaposition of criminal law teaching of domestic violence. Its main focus is on the biographical method of understanding domestic violence. This provides an approach to learning and to teaching within the undergraduate criminal and family syllabuses which challenges legal responses to violence within families. The defence of provocation is considered here as an illustration of a primary manifestation of domestic violence.