Bar Codes: Women in the Legal Profession (review)

Jean McKenzie Leiper (Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, King’s University College, University of Western Ontario) has woven a rich tapestry illustrating the barriers that women lawyers encounter in the legal profession and how they cope or alter their lives to adjust to this male dominated culture. Although longitudinal studies have been done on the legal profession in Ontario before, by Fiona Kay and John Hagan, Leiper takes a somewhat different approach to her sampling and research design. “Unsure about how to begin” her study of women lawyers, she drew on the assistance of her daughter, a lawyer practising criminal law in Toronto “who contacted nineteen of her legal colleagues,” and a prosecutor friend who “called a network of senior women in the legal profession” (p.vii). Armed with these lists and adding additional lawyers referred to her by her interviewees, she interviewed 30 lawyers in Toronto in 1994. These lawyers “tended to specialize in criminal, corporate and tax law” (p.14). Using similar sampling techniques, she interviewed 30 lawyers in London, Ontario in 1996 who were “over-represented in family law practice” (p.14).

In 1998, with the assistance of a SSHRC grant, Leiper re-interviewed these 60 women and added another 50 women lawyers from across Ontario using a stratified random sample which focused on geographical location (p.15). In addition to taped-interviews, Leiper used a questionnaire to record “family background, education, year of call to the bar, practice type, family responsibilities, and responses to time pressures” (p.14). Neither of these instruments appears in the book which sometimes makes it difficult to know exactly how questions were worded. At page 84 we learn that “a set of structured questionnaires were administered at the time of each interview” which included the time crunch index developed by Statistics Canada. There is no overall profile given of these 110 women which would have been available from these structured questionnaires; however in chapter 3, footnote 161 states that 34% of the respondents were 30 years of age or older when they were called to the bar. The youngest was 26 when she entered law school.

It is unclear why Leiper describes her sample as the “the first generation of women” or the “first wave” of women in the legal profession (p.4–5). Dr. Dorothy E. Chunn and I are studying the first generation of women called to the bar in British Columbia between 1912 and 1930 and all our subjects are deceased forcing us to rely on informants. Given that the first woman called to the bar in Ontario, Clara Brett Martin, was called in 1897, I suspect that Leiper studied the second wave, although it is difficult to determine if all of her interviewees were senior women or not as there is no overall sense of the seniority of her respondents.

What is perhaps unique about Bar Codes is that, before going to press in 2006, Leiper contacted as many of the 110 women as she could and provides an update, “Where are they now?,” as an Appendix to her book. The Appendix shows where these women were in terms of their careers and the number of children they had in 1994, 1998 and 2006. It makes for a fascinating read, as one can follow some women (mostly those who have children) out of the profession.

At the suggestion of a reviewer (chapter 1, footnote 13), Portia’s experience of robing becomes the interlacing metaphor for this book. Chapter 2 provides some from-the-heart responses to questions about robing which clearly illustrate that Leiper and her research assistants had great rapport with their interviewees. The question was only asked if the women wore robes regularly and the question would not interrupt the flow of the interview. A “brief explanation” preceded the question (chapter 2, footnote 44). Although the comments on robing were captivating, I was disappointed not to be told how many of the 110 women were actually asked the question (which might give the reader...