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Weekly UpdatesJean McKenzie Leiper, Bar Codes: Women in the Legal Profession (Vancouver: UBC Press 2006)
NUMEROUS BOOKS have explored the legal profession, including women's battles to gain admission to law, the business and corporatization of the profession, and the diversification of specializations and sectors within the legal profession. Women's contemporary representation and impact on the profession of law have garnered particular attention in recent detailed case studies in Australia, the us, Canada, and Britain. What sets Bar Codes apart from other books on lawyers and women in the legal profession more specifically?
Three elements make this book both original and worthy of scholarly attention. First, the subject is an important one. McKenzie Leiper examines women's experiences as lawyers, raising challenging debates over their integration, their impact on the culture of professional norms, and the consequences for augmenting time demands on both lawyers' lives and the profession's reputation. Second, McKenzie Leiper has undertaken a highly innovative study, interviewing 110 women lawyers working across a range of practice settings throughout Ontario. These women were interviewed over an eight year period (1994-2002); the majority of them were interviewed twice over the span of the project. This sort of qualitative research with a longitudinal dimension, and incorporating mixed methods of questionnaires and time-scheduling measurement is exceptional. Third, McKenzie Leiper possesses a refreshing and engaging writing style that seamlessly integrates lawyers' narratives within theoretical debate.
McKenzie Leiper begins with a clever play on words--discussing civil and criminal codes as the cornerstones of legal doctrine, codes of conduct for professional standards, dress codes, and coded meanings embedded in the stalwartly masculine culture and traditions of law practice. It is the unwritten codes, or informal norms, that McKenzie Leiper argues are problematic for women. These include expectations about hours at the office, access to prized files, presence at informal meetings, and unspoken views about pregnancy and parental responsibilities. As McKenzie Leiper observes, "Women who either fail to crack the codes or choose to ignore them can remain committed members of the bar but they are distanced from the powerful centres of legal practice." (6)
An unusual focus in the book is McKenzie Leiper's extensive analysis of dress codes in courtroom appearances. The detailed interpretation of Portia in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is admittedly taxing at times. Yet, McKenzie Leiper raises interesting issues surrounding the cultivation of professional reputations, legitimacy through dress, and legal robes as "mantles of professionalism that help to authenticate women" in their courtroom performances. (19) Her analysis of women's responses to the robes explores elitism, professional identity formation, and empowerment versus disenfranchisement from symbolic authority.
Women's experiences in law school are first examined historically through the entry of early Canadian women lawyers to legal training. McKenzie Leiper offers a Bourdieusian approach to cultural and social capitals in law practice and legal curriculum. She does not shy away from unresolved debates on women's styles of practice, their purported commitment to an "ethic of care," and contemporary feminist critiques of law school culture and pedagogy. She forays into barriers of social class, race, sexual orientation, and physical disabilities among law students and lawyers and boldly asserts her distaste for inequities persistent in continuous escalation of tuition fees and the intertwined impact of career paths privileged by 'elite' law schools.
Time is another pervasive theme of Bar Codes. McKenzie Leiper undertakes quantitative analyses of indices of time crunch, comparing data from her lawyer surveys with Statistics Canada data on employed Canadian women. Dovetailing the potential monotony of numeric data are lawyers' own accounts of stress associated with highly regimented time commitments, further emphasizing themes of time famine, role overload, and harried lives deprived of personal time and sleep.
Her analysis of temporal conflicts in the lives of women lawyers leads McKenzie Leiper to conclude that women lawyers' time is "splintered and cross-hatched with the competing temporal obligations that mark their daily routines." (111) Her analysis underscores the "punishing time norms" (128) established by large law firms and infused throughout the profession, and pervading expectations that compel women to precariously balance the double burden of career and family responsibilities. She documents tempo-numbing daily routines and diverse career paths of women lawyers through rich qualitative data and the display of actual time calendars and career charts among a sub-sample of lawyers. McKenzie Leiper's repeated interviews and subsequent follow-ups allow the reader to see the unfolding of careers rarely documented in studies of the profession. That said, nearly ten percent of McKenzie Leiper's sample had left the profession by the end of the study and their motives for leaving and destinations remain largely elusive.
The book is not without limitations. McKenzie Leiper herself acknowledges the cursory attention to issues of race and ethnicity. There are occasional theoretical loose ends, including passing references to Foucault's disciplinary practices and Goffman's theories of dress in chapter 2. The sampling method initially employed a non-probability sampling scheme that evolved to a second data tier using a random stratified sample. The data are perhaps less representative than presumed; yet the insight afforded through in-depth and longitudinal interviewing is substantial. Despite a convincing rationale for a sample comprised exclusively of women, one wonders to what extent men also "learn to be docile and to submit to the rigours of transformation in law school [and] in legal practice." (28) Furthermore, without gender comparisons, is it safe to assume the traditional 'masculine' linear career model has not diversified and that most male lawyers remain single-earners with a spouse at home to manage the 'personal' realm? To the extent that these patterns endure, McKenzie Leiper's research findings are all the more unsettling.
Central to Bar Codes is the question: "Have the expectations for performance been modified over the past thirty years as women have advanced in the system or charted new approaches to the management of time, professional work, and family life?" (177-8) McKenzie Leiper's response is a tentative yes. Through their presence and agitation for change, women have "raised alarm bells" regarding gender inequities and prejudice in law practice and provoked reports, policies and responses by law societies and bar associations. (178) McKenzie Leiper offers tenacious optimism, uncovering stories of women who have carved their own rewarding, if not always conventional, career paths, who have achieved fulfilling lives, and choreographed intricate timetables despite the sometimes chaotic rhythm of children's needs and greedy institutions. I was perhaps less convinced by her claim that women lawyers have participated in a profound tidal process of social change. Yet, McKenzie Leiper concludes with acknowledgement of accomplished pioneering women lawyers and their impact on all levels of the justice system, offering inspiration for future generations of women lawyers.
Bar Codes will provoke debate and discussion among scholars of law and society, as well as among leaders in law societies, bar associations, and the country's law schools, and possibly even kindle discussion of progressive reform in the boardrooms of law firms. Women contemplating careers in law and those strategizing about how best to manage professional lives and personal goals will find this book a touchstone of insight, cautionary tales, and inspiration.
FIONA KAY
Queen's University
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