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Book part
Publication date: 2 September 2009

Ethan Michelson

In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal…

Abstract

In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal profession? Findings from four sources of quantitative data suggest that gender inequality in China's private and highly market-driven legal profession is a microcosm of larger patterns of female disadvantage in China's evolving urban labor market. Although employment opportunities for women lawyers have greatly expanded quantitatively, their careers are qualitatively less successful than those of their male counterparts in terms of both income and partnership status. In the Chinese bar, women's significantly shorter career trajectories are perhaps the most important cause of their lower incomes and slimmer chances of becoming a law firm partner. Future research must identify the causes of this significant career longevity gap between men and women in the Chinese legal profession.

Details

Work and Organizationsin China Afterthirty Years of Transition
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-730-7

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Sebastian Billows

The legal devices crafted within large organizations are a key component of legal endogeneity theory (LET). While symbolically complying with legislation, legal devices allow…

Abstract

The legal devices crafted within large organizations are a key component of legal endogeneity theory (LET). While symbolically complying with legislation, legal devices allow organizations to infuse managerial logics into the legal field, which eventually diverts law from its initial political goals. Although the LET has considered legal devices such as anti-discrimination guidelines and grievance procedures, this chapter argues that contracts also constitute a locus of symbolic compliance and contribute to the eventual endogenization of regulation. Supplementing LET with a focus on legal intermediation, this chapter explores how contracts are crafted and used by large organizations to respond to regulatory pressure. While other legal instruments are unambiguously managerialized from the outset, contracts are highly versatile legal objects that perform the seemingly opposite functions of symbolically complying with regulation and serving substantive commercial purposes. This discussion of the role of contracts as compliance mechanisms is based on an in-depth empirical study of the French retail industry and its response to a set of regulations that aimed at making their business practices fairer.

Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2019

Shauhin Talesh and Jérôme Pélisse

This article explores how legal intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change. We suggest the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules coupled with the shift from…

Abstract

This article explores how legal intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change. We suggest the increasing complexity and ambiguity of legal rules coupled with the shift from government to governance provide legal intermediaries greater opportunities to influence law and social change. Drawing from new institutional sociology, we suggest rule-intermediaries shape legal and social change, with varying degrees of success, in two ways: (1) law is filtered through non-legal logics emanating from various organizational fields and (2) law is professionalized by non-legal professionals. We draw from case studies in the United States and France to show how intermediaries facilitate or inhibit social change.

Details

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-727-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 March 2017

Lionel Paolella and Amanda Sharkey

This article integrates two approaches – the “categorization as a theoretical tool” and the “typicality judgment” – that both emphasize audience confusion as a mechanism through…

Abstract

This article integrates two approaches – the “categorization as a theoretical tool” and the “typicality judgment” – that both emphasize audience confusion as a mechanism through which category spanners become devalued or ignored. However, the two perspectives differ in their specification of why confusion will likely lead to devaluation or ignoring. In this study, we consider the interplay of these two approaches in the setting of corporate law market. We find that spanning product categories has a U-shaped relationship with perceived clarity of law firm identity. Although neither of the two perspectives alone can explain our findings, they can do so together.

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From Categories to Categorization: Studies in Sociology, Organizations and Strategy at the Crossroads
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78714-238-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2019

Jérôme Pélisse

Legal intermediation is an emerging theoretical concept developed to grasp the importance of the process and actors who contribute to legal endogenization, in particular in the…

Abstract

Legal intermediation is an emerging theoretical concept developed to grasp the importance of the process and actors who contribute to legal endogenization, in particular in the field of economic activities and work governed by various public regulations. This chapter proposes to extend the analytical category of legal intermediary to all actors who, even if they are not legal professionals, deal on a daily basis with legal categories and provisions. In order to deepen our understanding of these actors and their contribution to how organizations frame legality, this chapter investigates four examples of legal intermediaries who are not legal professionals. Based on field surveys conducted over the past 15 years in France on employment policy, industrial relations, occupational health and safety regulation, and forensic economics, I make three contributions. First, the cases show the diversity of legal intermediaries and their growing and increasingly reflexive roles in our complex economies. Second, while they are not legal professionals per se, to different degrees, these legal intermediaries assume roles similar to those of legal professionals such as legislators, judges, lawyers, inspectors, cops, and even clerks. Finally, depending on their level of legitimacy and power, I show how legal intermediaries take part in the process of legal endogenization and how they more broadly frame ordinary legality.

Book part
Publication date: 26 June 2006

Hugh P. Gunz and Sally P. Gunz

There has long been an “ideal” model of the profession in the sociology of the professions. Our point of departure is that the independent professional is something of a vanishing…

Abstract

There has long been an “ideal” model of the profession in the sociology of the professions. Our point of departure is that the independent professional is something of a vanishing species, and professional practice is increasingly carried out within non-professional organizations (organizations not managed nor largely staffed by fellow professionals). Indeed, can we expect to recognize our “ideal” professional at all whether in the multi-disciplinary professional service practice or more focussed large private practices? Might in fact there be something fundamentally flawed about both in this model? This chapter explores these issues and their implications for how ethical dilemmas are resolved.

Details

Professional Service Firms
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-302-0

Book part
Publication date: 24 September 2010

William D. Henderson

Over the last several decades, virtually all large U.S. law firms have adopted a human capital strategy that emphasizes academic performance and the prestige of the law school…

Abstract

Over the last several decades, virtually all large U.S. law firms have adopted a human capital strategy that emphasizes academic performance and the prestige of the law school attended. Although this focus is rooted more in tradition than in hard empirical evidence that it produces a competitive advantage, the question has long been irrelevant for most law firms because of the perennial rise in profits. If the model is not broken, the adage runs, why fix it? Drawing upon extensive historical and contemporaneous evidence, this essay argues that the limitations of the traditional credentials-based model have been masked by a steady multidecade surge in the demand for corporate legal services. Further, various data and trendlines suggest that the growth in demand for corporate legal services is beginning to flatten out. In the coming years, many large corporate law firms will be in the unfamiliar position of competing over market share. Unlike the relative calm and prosperity of the prior era, their survival will likely depend upon a human capital strategy that asks and answers several basic empirical questions regarding the selection and development of lawyers.

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Special Issue Law Firms, Legal Culture, and Legal Practice
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-357-7

Book part
Publication date: 8 November 2010

Sean M. O’Connor

Improving the commercialization of university research has become a national priority. Most existing programs focus on training and supporting faculty and students to be the…

Abstract

Improving the commercialization of university research has become a national priority. Most existing programs focus on training and supporting faculty and students to be the entrepreneur. However, programs are also needed to train and support those who will serve the entrepreneur. This chapter asserts that professionals with specific expertise in serving entrepreneurs are a critical, yet overlooked, part of the “innovation ecosystem” necessary to commercialize university research. It provides an overview of the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic at the University of Washington, which provides a multidisciplinary teaching, research, and service platform that assists University spin-offs while developing the next generation innovation ecosystem. Bringing together law, business, and engineering students to work with tech transfer licensing officers and faculty researchers to spin off a university technology involves many challenges. Yet, it can be done and the benefits are manifold. This chapter outlines three key issues for this kind of program. First, who is the client: the tech transfer office or the faculty researcher? Second, how to mediate among the different visions for how to commercialize the technology through the spin-off – including whether the technology is ready for commercialization or needs to undergo further translational work. And third, how to ensure that all the different students are being properly supervised and that all project members are keeping appropriate confidentiality toward the technology and business plans. The chapter shows how the missteps, conflicts, and confusion that naturally arise for each team project actually provide the best teaching moments for team members, supervisors, and faculty alike.

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Spanning Boundaries and Disciplines: University Technology Commercialization in the Idea Age
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-200-6

Abstract

Details

Corporate Fraud Exposed
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-418-8

Abstract

Details

Legal Professions: Work, Structure and Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76230-800-2

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