This paper documents and studies the gender gap in performance among associate lawyers in the United States. Unlike other high-skilled professions, the legal profession assesses performance using transparent measures that are widely used and comparable across firms: the number of hours billed to...

Scholars and practitioners have looked extensively at patterns of racial inequality in U.S. business law firms. In the corporate bar, pull factors that have long shaped legal professionals’ careers include promotions, outside job offers to move from one firm to another, or family priorities...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between the number of lawyers and civil litigation across Italian provinces over the period 2000-2005. First, we document the existence of a positive correlation between the number of lawyers and litigation. We then employ a 2SLS approach to verify...

The recent history of the legal profession is presented as one where the re-regulation of the profession, as epitomized in the Legal Services Act 2007, has placed the large law firm at the centre as a site of regulation in its own right. The legal profession has redefined its professional...

This article examines the drastic organizational changes that have taken place in law firms and law schools in the last thirty years and how they have seriously disadvantaged women. Women have been almost 50% of law school graduating classes nationally for the last fifteen to twenty years. They...

How will artificial intelligence (AI) and associated digital technologies reshape the work of lawyers and structure of law firms? Legal services are traditionally provided by highly-skilled humans — that is, lawyers. Dramatic recent progress in AI has triggered speculation about the extent to...

This paper was delivered as the Randall Park Lecture at the University of Kentucky College of Law. It addresses the consequences of nearly two decades of lawyer mobility and law firm destablization and the effects of these trends on the professional development of inexperienced lawyers. It also...

Fostering activism has always been central to progressive lawyering theory. Every approach to the progressive practice of law has contemplated as an essential ingredient some form of client activity--be it collective mobilization, civic participation or simply empowerment. This Article traces...