Women in Law is an insightful and provocative study of the paradoxes women face as they live the realities beyond the new mystique of a high-powered career.
There is a lesson to be learned from this fascinating account of women lawyers. Although the number of women in this traditionally male-dominated profession has grown tremendously in the past decade — and the clearly illegitimate formal barriers to their success have been removed — insidious and unconscious brakes on their careers remain. Cynthia Fuchs Epstein tells the whole story of women lawyers: from the humiliating “Ladies’ Days” at Ivy League law schools to the challenges facing today’s gray-flannel women lawyers on Wall Street.
When she was a sociology graduate student in the 1960s Cynthia Fuchs Epstein studied women lawyers as an example of women who were taking nontraditional roles: professionals in a male environment, overcoming discrimination and isolation, toiling in the silent worlds of research and domestic law. Comparing those pioneers with the new generation, Epstein shows that the “new women of law” have the advantage of numbers and a broader conception of the role of law in society. Many more are successfully engaged in nontraditional areas for women such as corporate and litigation work. But women lawyers are still subject to the traditional cross fires of professional and private life the subtle messages of resistance from antagonistic colleagues.
Epstein first locates women lawyers: who they are, where they work, and what they do. Tracing careers from application to law school, through the student experience, the job search, and the effort to 'make partner' she records, often through the voices of the women interviewed over the past decade, how the
practice of law impinges on all aspects of the lives of women. But she also shows how women are changing society and breaking new ground in law through their legal careers: in traditional firms, as law school faculty, in government, and in public interest law. The problems women face must ultimately be faced by the men with whom they work and live. Women in Law defines these problems, shows how people have solved them, and explores the larger issues they raise.