Sociological Perspectives

There is a rich literature on the question of the gender gap in the legal profession, with wonderful work by scholars such as Elizabeth Gorman, Ronit Dinotvitzer, Fiona Kay, Joyce Sperling and others. One of the gaps in this literature that I've found over the years though is the lack of in-depth analyses of particular practice areas or individual firms.  Many of the analyses look at the gender gaps in the fractions of law students, junior associates and partners and stop there (I am guilty as charged on this).

With summer upon us, I thought others might be searching for good new reading, as I was when I took up a smart friend's longtime recommendation to read Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. So much good stuff in here.

Cathy Hwang and Matt Jennejohn, two of the brightest young stars of the contract world, just put up a paper summarizing their view of one of the exciting new directions that contract research is taking. They describe it as the study of contractual complexity ("The New Research on Contractual Complexity", is their title). But I don't like the term "contractual complexity" at all, since I simply cannot take seriously the idea that anything that lawyers do is all that complex.  Convoluted, confused and obscure, yes.  But complex? Hell no.

Over at the Machine Lawyering blog -- organized and edited by the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Law Faculty’s Centre for Financial Regulation and Economic Development -- Slipster Nathalie Martin and I just posted some commentary about our new article,

Today, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled her new plan to reform the consumer bankruptcy system. The plan is simple, yet elegant. It is based on actual data and research (including some of my own with Consumer Bankruptcy Project co-investigators Slipster Bob Lawless, former Slipster, now Congresswoman Katie Porter, and former Slipster Debb Thorne).