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This book re-examines fundamental assumptions about the American legal profession and the boundaries between 'professional' lawyers, 'lay' lawyers, and social workers. Putting legal history and women's history in dialogue, it demonstrates that nineteenth-century women's organizations first offered legal aid to the poor and that middle-class women functioning as lay lawyers, provided such assistance. Felice Batlan illustrates that by the early twentieth century, male lawyers founded their own legal aid societies. These new legal aid lawyers created an imagined history of legal aid and a blueprint for its future in which women played no role and their accomplishments were intentionally omitted. In response, women social workers offered harsh criticisms of legal aid leaders and developed a more robust social work model of legal aid. These different models produced conflicting understandings of expertise, professionalism, the rule of law, and ultimately, the meaning of justice for the poor.
List of contents
Introduction; Part I. A Female Dominion of Legal Aid, 1863-1910: 1. The origins of legal aid; 2. The Chicago experience: the maturation of women's legal aid; Part II. The Professionalization of Legal Aid, 1890-1921: 3. Of immigrants, sailors, and servants: the Legal Aid Society of New York; 4. Reinventing legal aid; Part III. Dialogues: Lawyers and Social Workers, 1921-45: 5. Constellations of justice; 6. Compromises; Conclusion.
About the author
Felice Batlan is Professor of Law and Associate Dean at the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law. Her groundbreaking work, which explores interactions between law, gender, history, and the legal profession, has appeared in numerous law reviews, history journals, and anthologies. She is a book review editor for Law and History Review and was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of the Supreme Court and Continuity and Change. She has served as an New York University Golieb Fellow, a Hurst Fellow, a Freehling Fellow, and received the CCWH/Berkshire Women's History Dissertation Award.
Summary
This book re-examines fundamental assumptions about the American legal profession and the boundaries between 'professional' lawyers, 'lay' lawyers, and social workers. Putting legal history and women's history in dialogue, it details the history of the origins and development of free legal aid for the poor in the United States.
Additional text
Advance praise: 'In a remarkably original social/legal history, Batlan is asking readers to rethink what lawyering has meant and could mean. And when you ask 'outside the box' questions, you come up with surprising answers. This book can help us understand why law today can be far from justice.' Linda Gordon, Florence Kelley Professor of History, New York University
