Hilary Sommerlad
Biographic Data
| ID | 4368448 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Hilary Sommerlad |
| GIVEN NAMES | Hilary |
| FAMILY NAME | Sommerlad |
| SIGNATURE | SOMMERLAD H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Leeds Beckett University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1644-7205 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 64 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Diversity and the legal profession
The extent to which legal professions around the world facilitate and promote the careers of a diverse range of qualified candidates has been a focus for research and debate throughout the 21 st century. This essay discusses a significant contribution to this field, Robert Nelson, et. al.’s The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession , a comprehensive study of lawyers’ careers in the United States t…
Diamonds in the Rough
Professional Service Firms (PSFs) rely on their socially exclusive approach to recruitment as a source of cultural capital and social prestige, but recent developments have obliged them to implement a more inclusive recruitment policy. The resulting contradiction between exclusivity and inclusivity has accentuated pre-existing tensions inherent to professions’ claim to high status and their supposed social detachment. Drawing from a UK government…
Elaine Freer
Professions and Ethnicity
Profession is a contested concept, its complexity being compounded by its fluidity and reflecting professions' embeddedness in their socioeconomic context. Definitions range from functionalist to market‐control perspectives; however, there is a consensus that elite status and social closure are key features and that the professional workplace is a primary site for the reproduction of status hierarchies grounded in ethnicity, class, and gender.
Social justice on the margins
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has been described by many commentators as a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which is likely to impact disproportionately on marginalised groups and individuals. This paper seeks to set LASPO in its historical context; it is viewed as a radical development, but nevertheless one that is consistent with the policy discourses of responsibilisation and consumerism dominant si…
Gender & Justice
Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession
The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s…
Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation
This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational reproduction. The research project on which the paper is based was stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an increasingly diverse profession negotiate the c…
Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal Aid
The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post‐war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and th…
Virginia Drachman, Sisters in Law, Women Lawyers in Modern American History
I’ve lost the plot’
This paper examines the impact on a specific group of solicitors in the United Kingdom of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. These changes are seen as a form of the New Public Management (NPM), and the paper explores the proposition that NPM is producing a public sector characterized by high output but low morale, through an analysis of qualitative data from a group of ‘political’ legal aid practitioners. The data is seen to suppor…
Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession
The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s…
Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation
This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational reproduction. The research project on which the paper is based was stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an increasingly diverse profession negotiate the c…
Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal Aid
The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post‐war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and th…
I’ve lost the plot’
This paper examines the impact on a specific group of solicitors in the United Kingdom of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. These changes are seen as a form of the New Public Management (NPM), and the paper explores the proposition that NPM is producing a public sector characterized by high output but low morale, through an analysis of qualitative data from a group of ‘political’ legal aid practitioners. The data is seen to suppor…
Social justice on the margins
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has been described by many commentators as a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which is likely to impact disproportionately on marginalised groups and individuals. This paper seeks to set LASPO in its historical context; it is viewed as a radical development, but nevertheless one that is consistent with the policy discourses of responsibilisation and consumerism dominant si…
I’ve lost the plot’
This paper examines the impact on a specific group of solicitors in the United Kingdom of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. These changes are seen as a form of the New Public Management (NPM), and the paper explores the proposition that NPM is producing a public sector characterized by high output but low morale, through an analysis of qualitative data from a group of ‘political’ legal aid practitioners. The data is seen to suppor…
Virginia Drachman, Sisters in Law, Women Lawyers in Modern American History
Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal Aid
The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post‐war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and th…
Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation
This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational reproduction. The research project on which the paper is based was stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an increasingly diverse profession negotiate the c…
Social justice on the margins
The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has been described by many commentators as a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which is likely to impact disproportionately on marginalised groups and individuals. This paper seeks to set LASPO in its historical context; it is viewed as a radical development, but nevertheless one that is consistent with the policy discourses of responsibilisation and consumerism dominant si…
Gender & Justice
Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession
The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s…
Professions and Ethnicity
Profession is a contested concept, its complexity being compounded by its fluidity and reflecting professions' embeddedness in their socioeconomic context. Definitions range from functionalist to market‐control perspectives; however, there is a consensus that elite status and social closure are key features and that the professional workplace is a primary site for the reproduction of status hierarchies grounded in ethnicity, class, and gender.
Elaine Freer
Diamonds in the Rough
Professional Service Firms (PSFs) rely on their socially exclusive approach to recruitment as a source of cultural capital and social prestige, but recent developments have obliged them to implement a more inclusive recruitment policy. The resulting contradiction between exclusivity and inclusivity has accentuated pre-existing tensions inherent to professions’ claim to high status and their supposed social detachment. Drawing from a UK government…
Diversity and the legal profession
The extent to which legal professions around the world facilitate and promote the careers of a diverse range of qualified candidates has been a focus for research and debate throughout the 21 st century. This essay discusses a significant contribution to this field, Robert Nelson, et. al.’s The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession , a comprehensive study of lawyers’ careers in the United States t…
Political science (9 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Legal Education and Practice Innovations (5 works) · Politics (5 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · Gender Diversity and Inequality (3 works) · Public Administration (3 works)