Lawyers at Work

Herbert M. Kritzer

Mar 2015 · Contemporary Society Series Book 7 · Quid Pro Books

About this ebook

This collection of articles and essays by Herbert Kritzer draws on his extensive research related to lawyers and legal practice conducted over the last 35 years. That research has applied existing theoretical frameworks and developed innovative ways of thinking about how to understand what it is that lawyers do. The chapters reflect the wide range of both qualitative and quantitative research methods he has employed, and draw on his work on the Civil Litigation Research Project, a massive study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice under the Carter administration, and continues through subsequent studies of lawyer-client relationships in Canada, contingency fee legal practice, and insurance defense practice. This book is for scholars and practitioners interested in understanding the work of lawyers in day-to-day litigation-like settings—and those concerned about what the future might hold for the structure of the legal profession and the nature of legal practice. 

“Lawyers at Work is a masterful collection, by one of the leading and award winning empirical researchers on legal institutions and the legal profession today, on the ‘black box’ of law practice. Spanning decades of research, Professor Kritzer presents data and findings on how lawyers bill, develop relationships with clients and opponents, manage scientific expertise, negotiate, and conduct their everyday work in a wide variety of case types. He explores and exposes the differences in  both theories and data about the legal profession from virtually every major study there is on what lawyers actually do. If anyone wants to know about the real practices of lawyers in the past and present, and with important projections about the future, this is a must read. We can speculate about what lawyers really do, but Kritzer has the actual ‘facts.’”
—  Carrie Menkel-Meadow, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science, University of California, Irvine, and A.B. Chettle Professor of Law, Dispute Resolution and Civil Procedure, Georgetown University Law Center

“Through wide-ranging field research over 35 years Kritzer has done more than anyone to document the craft of lawyers at work. This extraordinary compilation finds the whole in a professional lifetime of research, cementing Kritzer’s reputation as pioneer and master of empirical legal research.”
—  Tom Baker, William Maul Measey Professor of Law and Health Sciences, University of Pennsylvania Law School

“Bert Kritzer has long been recognized as one of the most astute scholarly commentators on the U.S. legal profession. This collection of papers allows readers to see his body of work as a whole, and to appreciate the unique combination of quantitative and qualitative skills on which it rests. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to cut through the myths that pervade debates about policy and practice in civil justice.”
—  Robert Dingwall, Nottingham Trent University, UK

About the author

Herbert M. Kritzer holds the Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Law School. He has conducted extensive empirical research on the work of lawyers in the U.S. and is internationally recognized for his writing on a range of civil justice issues. He is the author or coauthor of six books and the editor or coeditor of three additional books; his research has appeared in over 100 articles in professional journals. He has served as editor of the Law & Society Review.