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Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Ronit Dinovitzer  and
Bryant G. Garth
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Abstract

This article proposes a new approach to the study of job satisfaction in the legal profession. Drawing on a Bourdieusian understanding of the relationship between social class and dispositions, we argue that job satisfaction depends in part on social origins and the credentials related to these origins, with social hierarchies helping to define the expectations and possibilities that produce professional careers. Through this lens, job satisfaction is understood as a mechanism through which social and professional hierarchies are produced and reproduced. Relying on the first national data set on lawyer careers (including both survey data and in-depth interviews), we find that lawyers' social background, as reflected in the ranking of their law school, decreases career satisfaction and increases the odds of a job search for the most successful new lawyers. When combined with the interview data, we find that social class is an important component of a stratification system that tends to lead individuals into hierarchically arranged positions.

Type
A Serendipitous Symposium: Two Issues Confronting the Legal Profession
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2007 , pp. 1 - 50
Copyright
© 2007 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Authors are listed alphabetically. This research was supported by grants from the American Bar Foundation, National Science Foundation (Grant No. SES0115521), Access Group, Law School Admission Council, National Association for Law Placement, National Conference of Bar Examiners, and Open Society Institute. The views and conclusions stated herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of individuals or organizations associated with the After the JD study.

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