The Making of Lawyers' Careers
Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession
Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, Joyce S. Sterling, David B. Wilkins, Ethan Michelson, and Meghan Dawe
Overview
Drawing on the After the JD study — a national survey that followed a single cohort of lawyers across the first two decades of their careers — this book examines how the legal profession distributes opportunity and reward. The authors combine more than 10,000 survey responses with over two hundred interviews to trace how race, gender, and class shape where lawyers end up and how they fare. The result is a detailed account of a market-driven profession in which individual careers both reflect and reproduce broader social inequalities. It is the culminating statement of the After the JD project, central to Nelson's research on lawyers' careers.
Citation
Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, Joyce S. Sterling, David B. Wilkins, Ethan Michelson, and Meghan Dawe. The Making of Lawyers' Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession. University of Chicago Press, 2023.