Urban Lawyers

The New Social Structure Of The Bar

John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann

Book cover titled "Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar" by John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann, with small circular images of people, a gavel, a building, and scales of justice.

Overview

Based on a large survey of Chicago lawyers, this book documents how the urban bar changed over a period of rapid growth, the entry of women in large numbers, and the expansion of firms. Nelson and his co-authors show how these shifts reshaped lawyers' relationships with clients, their incomes and job satisfaction, their professional networks, and their civic and political lives. It revisits the questions of an earlier landmark study of the Chicago bar and offers an updated portrait of the profession's social structure. The book is a cornerstone of Nelson's work on the organization of the legal profession.

A follow-up, two decades on, to Heinz and Laumann's Chicago Lawyers (1982); translated into Japanese in 2019.

Citation

John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann. Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar. University of Chicago Press, 2005.

University of Chicago Press