Work and Honor in the Law: Prestige and the Division of Lawyers' Labor

Sandefur, Rebecca L.

doi:10.2307/3088885

Cited by 71 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Critics rate California wine above French wine in quality, yet California wine remains lower in status than French wines (Benjamin and Podolny 1999). Similarly, familiar terms such as "silk stocking firm," "Wall Street firm," or "boutique firm" signify the degree to which lawyers and clients attend to status independent of quality (Hitt et al 2001;Sandefur 2001;Sherer and Lee 2002).…”

Section: Social Structure and The Size Of The Spreadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legally Charged: Embeddedness and Profit in Large Law Firm Legal Billings

Lancaster

Uzzi²

2012

Sociological Focus

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Section: Social Structure and The Size Of The Spreadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legally Charged: Embeddedness and Profit in Large Law Firm Legal Billings

Lancaster

Uzzi²

2012

Sociological Focus

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“…In addition to material rewards, professionals' control over their jurisdiction affords symbolic rewards; within the professional division of labor, some tasks are seen as more respectable than others, and deference is due to professionals whose work is most professionally pure (Abbott 1981;Phillips, Turco, and Zuckerman 2013;Sandefur 2001). When professionals attempt to work with one another across professional boundaries, task-based difficulties can occur because collaboration requires them to make compromises in the tasks on which their valued material and status rewards are based (Bechky 2003a;DiBenigno and Kellogg forthcoming;Morrill and Rudes 2010;Vallas 2013).…”

Section: Barriers To Cross-professional Collaboration In Everyday Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brokerage Professions and Implementing Reform in an Age of Experts

Kellogg¹

2014

Am Sociol Rev

159

129

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In this comparative ethnographic case study of the implementation of a reform related to the Affordable Care Act in two community health centers, I find that professionals may not compete to claim new tasks (and thereby not implement reform) if these tasks require them to acquire information unrelated to their professional expertise, use work practices that conflict with their professional identity, or do impure or low-value tasks that threaten their professional interests. In such cases, reform may be implemented if lower-status workers fill in the gaps in the division of labor between the professions targeted by the reform, playing a brokerage role by protecting each profession's information, meanings, and tasks in everyday work. When the new tasks represent professionally ill-defined problems, brokers can be more effective if they use buffering practices rather than connecting practices-managing information rather than transferring it, matching meanings rather than translating them, and maintaining interests rather than transforming them-to accomplish reform. By playing a buffering role in the interstices between existing professional jurisdictions, lower-status workers can carve out their own jurisdiction, becoming a brokerage profession between existing professions that need to collaborate with one another for reform to occur. Public health activists argue that because low-income people's health problems often occur long before they get to their doctor, for the Affordable Care Act to be successful, patients need access to primary care physicians and to enabling programs that address the social determinants of health. Activists across the country have received funding for these programs (American Public Health Association [APHA] 2010). KeywordsMLP reform is an enabling program designed to improve the health outcomes of traditionally disadvantaged groups by changing the everyday practices of health center doctors and legal aid lawyers.Health center doctors typically treat low-income patients' medical problems; with the implementation of 3 MLP reform, they also address the social and legal problems that affect patients' health (e.g., if a patient's apartment lacks heat, it will be difficult for the patient to recover from an ear infection). Lawyers, in working with low-income clients, often use individual cases to bring legal reform for large numbers of the poor; with the implementation of MLP reform, they gain new access and treatment points for vulnerable clients by expanding legal screening, and they increase their ability to solve legal problems related to health for large numbers of the poor by getting doctors to assist with reform efforts.To implement MLP reform, both doctors and lawyers need to change how they screen clients, determine their eligibility for treatment, and treat them. Doctors must learn from lawyers to screen patients for unmet social and economic needs in areas such as income, housing and utilities, education, immigration, and personal and family stability; they must also refer ...

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“…Lawyers from such firms are not equipped to deal with the kind of legal work required in legal aid offices. Changes in legal hierarchies have also been reported in other Western countries (Sommerlad 2001;Heinz et al 1998;Sandefur 2001;Moorhead 2004). As is shown by Sommerlad, in England, the legal aid worker has gone from being a kind of cause lawyer-a lawyer with a social face-to being a low status hack lawyer with a massive overload of cases.…”

Section: Legal Aid In the Nordic Countries: A Nordic Model?mentioning

confidence: 73%