Book Description

When Jacoby and Myers made it big with their low-budget legal services and prolific advertising, the business of practicing law was forever changed. This book provides great insight into that continually expanding boundary between professionalism and commercialism. Technology, the expansion of a service-based economy, and the entry of more and more women into the legal profession have had a dramatic effect on the day-to-day business of practicing law. Carroll Seron's discerning examination of the work lives of solo and small-firm attorneys, in contrast to large corporate firms, considers how the small legal entrepreneur must balance professionalism with commerce. The men and women in Seron's book detail a range of creative strategies for getting business, organizing work, and serving clients. What emerges is a multifaceted picture of everything from the day-to-day grind to ways that individuals have expanded or, conversely, scaled down or specialized their practices. Most illuminating is Seron's exploration of the gender differences in practicing law, acquiring business, getting promotions, and balancing personal and professional lives. While a large percentage of married women attorneys are also responsible for the bulk of home and child care, most married men attorneys have a support network at home, which gives them time to generate contacts at social and political functions. Author note: Carroll Seron is a Professor in the School of Public Affairs, Baruch College, and in the Department of Sociology, the Graduate Center, at City University of New York. Among her previously published books is Rationalizing Justice: The Political Economy of Federal District Courts (co-authored with Wolf Heydebrand).