Overstating the Satisfaction of Lawyers

Recent literature commonly reports US lawyers as disheartened and discontented, but more than two dozen statistically based studies report that the great majority of lawyers put themselves on the satisfied side of scales of job satisfaction. The claim of this article is that, in three ways, these statistically based studies convey an overly rosy impression of lawyers' attitudes: first, that many of those who put themselves above midpoints on satisfaction scales are barely more positive than negative about their careers and often have profound ambivalence about their work; second, that surveys conducted at a single point in time necessarily fail to include the views of those who once worked in that setting but have now gone elsewhere; and third, that few studies address the problems of bias that may be caused by lower rates of response from the least satisfied persons in the population sampled.     

Young Lawyers and Work in the Public Interest

Much of the discussion of the bar's "public interest" effort has centered on the apparent unwillingness of lawyers, including young lawyers, to pursue public interest rather than traditional careers. To the extent that it is agreed that public interest work should be increased, the problem has been viewed as one of supply of lawyers rather than one of demand for their services. In this paper, just the opposite is argued; a variety of evidence is brought forth to suggest that the current public interest effort is limited mainly by the number of jobs available in that sector. In this light, various methods of increasing the funding of the public interest sector, and hence the number of jobs, are reviewed.     

新形势下律师工作的发展

律师工作是中国司法建设的重要组成部分。而今,随着中国特色社会主义法律体系的形成,如何更好地促进律师工作的发展,是一个亟待探讨的问题。     

关于新时期做好律师工作的思考

在“十二五”开局之际,律师工作进入重要的历史发展机遇期。2010年9月,中办、国办转发了《司法部关于进一步加强和改进律师工作的意见》（以下简称《意见》）,这充分体现了党中央、国务院对律师工作的高度重视和关心,为做好新时期律师工作指明了方向。     

进一步做好新形势下律师工作

最近,中共中央政治局常委、中央政法委书记周永康在全国律师工作会议发表重要讲话,强调要认真学习贯彻中共中央办公厅、国务院办公厅转发的《关于进一步加强和改进律师工作的意见》（以下简称《意见》）,把握律师是中国特色社会主义法律工作者的定位,坚持和完善中国特色社会主义律师制度,推进律师事业又好又快发展。司法部党组书记、     

Even Lawyers Get the Blues: Gender, Depression, and Job Satisfaction in Legal Practice

It is an intriguing puzzle that women lawyers, despite less desirable working conditions and blocked career advancement, report similar satisfaction as men lawyers with their legal careers. The paradoxical work satisfaction reported by women and men lawyers obscures a more notable difference in their depressed or despondent feelings. Using a panel study of women and men lawyers practicing in Toronto since the mid-1980s, we find at least three causal pathways through which gender indirectly is connected to job dissatisfaction and feelings of despondency. The first path is through gender differences in occupational power, which lead to differential despondency. The second path is through differences in perceived powerlessness, which directly influence job dissatisfaction. The third path is through feelings of despondency that result from concerns about the career consequences of having children. The combined picture that results illustrates the necessity to include measures of depressed affect in studies of dissatisfaction with legal practice. Explicit measurement and modeling of concerns about the consequences of having children and depressed feelings reveal a highly gendered response of women to legal practice that is otherwise much less apparent. Women are more likely to respond to their professional grievances with internalized feelings of despondency than with externalized expressions of job dissatisfaction. That is, they are more likely to privatize than publicize their professional troubles.     

Dating Violence Victimization,Relationship Satisfaction,Mental Health Problems,and Acceptability of Violence: A Comparison of Men and Women

Two of the most common reported consequences of dating violence are its impact on the victim’s satisfaction with their romantic relationship and its impact on the victim’s mental health. Recent research suggests that the strength of these relationships may be moderated by the degree to which the dating violence is acceptable to the victim. However, studies of these relationships have been limited to samples of women. The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationships among dating violence victimization, relationship satisfaction, mental health problems, and acceptability of violence for a sample that includes not only female victims, but also male victims. Using a sample of 155 male and 417 female college students, hierarchical regression analyses found that dating violence victimization is associated with relationship satisfaction and mental health problems for both men and women. For men, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and the mental health problems of depression, anxiety, and somatization. For women, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and relationship satisfaction only.

客户影响与职业主义的相对性：中国精英商务律师的工作

本文是一项关于精英商务律师的职业工作如何被来自不同类型客户的影响所建构的研究。文中所运用的数据,包括对中国六个精英商务律师事务所的24名律师的访谈和作者在其中一个事务所进行的参与观察。对于这些中国精英商务律师事务所而言,外企、国企和民企构成了他们极度多样化的客户类型。相应的,律师的工作变得具有灵活性和适应性,以满足客户的不同要求。同时,客户对于律师职业工作的影响也取决于商务律师事务所里的劳动分工:合伙人对于诊断、推理和治疗的过程具有牢固的控制,因此他们享受着高度的职业自主性,而非合伙律师在其工作场所内基本上被剥夺了这一文化系统,因此.他们的工作就很容易受到客户的影响。于是,客户对于职业工作的影响显现出随着律师的资历加深而逐渐下降的趋势。     

Client Influence and the Contingency of Professionalism: The Work of Elite Corporate Lawyers in China

This study examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Accordingly, lawyers' work becomes flexible and adaptive to accommodate the different demands of the clients. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. As a result, client influence on professional work appears to decrease with a lawyer's seniority.     

Political Liberalism and Political Embeddedness: Understanding Politics in the Work of Chinese Criminal Defense Lawyers

This article examines the meanings of politics in everyday legal practice using the case of Chinese criminal defense lawyers. Based on 194 in‐depth interviews with criminal defense lawyers and other informants in 22 cities across China, we argue that lawyers’ everyday politics have two faces: on the one hand, lawyers potentially can challenge state power, protect citizen rights, and pursue proceduralism in their daily work; on the other hand, they often have to rely on political connections with state agencies to protect themselves and to solve problems in their legal practice. The double meanings of politics—namely, political liberalism and political embeddedness—explain the complex motivations and coping tactics that are frequently found in Chinese lawyers’ everyday work. Our data show that the Chinese criminal defense bar is differentiated along these two meanings of politics into five clusters of lawyers: progressive elites, pragmatic brokers, notable activists, grassroots activists, and routine practitioners. They also suggest that a principal manifestation of political lawyering is not merely short‐term mobilization or revolutionary struggle against arbitrary state power, but also an incremental everyday process that often involves sophisticated tactics to manage interests that often conflict.     

Men and Women of Elite Law Firms: Reevaluating Kanter's Legacy

This paper tests the effects of minority partner representation on minority associate representation in a sample of 97 law firms from 1980 to 1990. We perform separate analyses for women, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, and we consider both within-group and cross-group effects. We find that minority partner representation has a positive effect on minority associate representation, which is statistically significant in the case of women and Asian Americans. Our findings are consistent with lawyers'own accounts, which emphasize the impact of partner composition on the distribution of rewards within law firms. We also show how our findings clarify previous studies about the effects of minority representation on the distribution of organizational rewards, focusing particularly on Kanter's work and subsequent related research.     

进一步做好新形势下律师工作 努力开创律师工作新局面

这次会议是经中央领导同志同意召开的一次重要会议,会议的主要任务是：认真学习贯彻党的十七大和十七届五中全会精神,学习贯彻《中共中央办公厅、国务院办公厅转发（司法部关于进一步加强和改进律师工作的意见）的通知》,总结近年来律师工作取得的成绩,对当前和今后一个时期律师工作作出全面部署,推动律师事业又好又快发展,努力为经济社会科学发展作出新贡献。     

湖南省公司律师试点工作的调查与思考

建立具有中国特色的公司律师制度是一项重大的改革。没有现成的模式。只有借鉴国外的做法,结合当地的实际,挥舞改革的剑,披荆斩棘; 抚弹创新的琴,陶冶情操;做到剑胆琴心,有张有弛,才能探索规律,不断完善。2003年元月以来,我省认真贯彻司法部的有关文件精神,在调查研究的基础上,选择湘潭市3家特大型企业开展试点,于2003年4月23日正式授牌颁证,司法部段正坤副部长亲临指导,并作了重要讲话。试点工作如火如荼,至今已是两个春秋。效果如何?收获怎样?作为管理者,我们进行了跟踪调查,事实证明,"风景这边独好"。试点单位已扩大到4家,试点律师已发展到17人,并设立了4个公司律师事务部,业务迅速拓展,管理逐步规范,效果十分明显。因为有了公司律师,这4个单位的法人治理结构依法设立,现代企业制度逐步完善,     

Family Values: How Children's Lawyers Can Help Their Clients by Advocating for Parents

Children's lawyers too often view themselves as standing in opposition to parents in dependency proceedings. In this article, the authors argue that child advocates do a disservice to their clients by not using their considerable skills, role advantages, and moral authority to actively help parents. Noting that areas of common ground far exceed those places where the children's bar and the parents' bar might part company, the authors contend that children's lawyers have an obligation to actively fight for parents' rights. In particular, spending time early in a case to ensure that appropriate reunification services are being offered is well worth the investment, as it redounds to the benefit of all parties. Several concrete practice tips are offered regarding how children's lawyers can better serve their clients by regularly advocating for parents.     

Women and Men in Jail: Attitudes Towards and Experiences of Domestic Violence

This study explores the pre-arrest domestic violence victimization and attitudes towards domestic violence reported by women and men confined in a Midwestern metropolitan jail. Results indicated that women in the jail sample had more fear for the safety of battered women than men in the jail sample. Women in jail were more likely than men in jail to view the legal system as a deterrent to domestic violence. Logistic regression models were constructed to explore associations between jail detainees’ pre-arrest experiences of domestic violence and their gender, age, education, race, parental status and other violent victimizations. The variables associated with pre-arrest domestic violence victimization were being a woman, a parent, a victim rape and a victim of threats with a deadly weapon.     

The Practice of Law as an Obstacle to Justice: Chinese Lawyers at Work

This article helps strengthen our comparative and theoretical understanding of lawyers as gatekeepers to justice by analyzing the screening practices of lawyers in a non-Western context. The explanation for Chinese lawyers' aversion to representing workers with labor grievances focuses on their own working conditions, on the organization of their legal labor, and on their evaluations of the moral character of prospective clients. By linking the screening practices of Chinese lawyers to their socioeconomic insecurity and to popular stereotypes informing and legitimating their screening decisions, this article identifies institutional and cultural obstacles not only to the official justice system but also to cause lawyering. After establishing motives for screening clients, this article then demonstrates lawyers' screening methods: by defining legal reality in strategic and often misleading ways, lawyers use the law as a weapon against the interests of the individuals who seek their help.     

Comparing Women and Men Arrested for Domestic Violence: A Preliminary Report

This study uses criminal justice data to compare women and men arrested for domestic violence on their levels of violence, reported victimization, general criminality, and substance abuse. Participants were 45 women and 45 men convicted of domestic violence between 1996 and 1998. Results indicate that women were less likely than men to have a history of domestic violence offenses and nonviolent crimes. They were also more likely to report that they had been injured or victimized by their partner at the time of their arrest. However, in other ways, women and men were similar: they were equally likely to have used severe violence and inflicted severe injuries on their victims; to have previously committed violence against nonintimates; and to have been using drugs or alcohol at the time of their arrest. The implications for treatment for women arrested for domestic violence are discussed.     

Lawyers of the Right: Networks and Organization

Lawyers for conservative and libertarian causes are active in organizing and mobilizing interest groups within the conservative coalition, and networks of relationships among those lawyers help to maintain and shape the coalition. Using data gathered in interviews with seventy-two such lawyers, this article analyzes characteristics of the lawyers and the structure of their networks. The findings suggest that the networks are divided into segments or blocks that are identified with particular constituencies, but that a distinct set of actors with extensive relationships serves to bridge the constituencies. Measures of centrality and brokerage confirm the structural importance of these actors in the network, and a search of references in news media confirms their prominence or prestige. This "core" set of actors occupies the "structural hole" in the network that separates the business constituency from religious conservatives. Libertarians, located near the core of the network, also occupy an intermediate position. Regression analysis of ties within the network suggests that the Federalist Society plays an important role in bringing the lawyers together.     

Interpreting Sexual Dating Encounters: Social Information Processing Differences in Men and Women

Research has shown that college women are at considerable risk for sexual assault by dating partners, and studies have shown early detection of threat risk cues is an important factor in rape avoidance. This study examined how men and women process sexual encounters in a date rape situation and how they differ in interpretation of cues and response decision-making using Crick and Dodge’s (1994) model of social information processing (SIP). Participants listened to an audio vignette depicting a female resisting sexual contact as the male continues to make sexual advances. The vignette was paused at a point in which there is ambiguity concerning the sexual intentions of the actors, and multiple choice/forced answer questions reflecting five stages in social information processing (causal and intent interpretation, goal clarification, response decision, response efficacy, and response evaluation) were administered. Analyses revealed males and females significantly differed in all SIP stages, and emotional reaction was a significant predictor of response decision. Implications of the findings were discussed.