ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon and develops three themes central to the earlier discussions of law, men and gender in this book. First, it interrogates, in one specific area of the profession, what it means to speak of legal practice as ‘masculine’ in the light of the social changes and developments detailed in preceding chapters. Second, it addresses the relation between men, parenting and family practices introduced in chapter 5, asking to what extent shifting beliefs around gender, work and masculinity are informing perceptions of career success and understandings of an acceptable workplace performance within the legal profession. Third, it contributes to understandings of gender, law and masculinity by exploring an issue that has, in contrast to the now rich volume of empirical, historical and theoretical research concerned with ‘the woman lawyer’,2 been relatively underexplored: that is, the relation between male lawyers and the negotiation of ‘work-life’ balance. Notwithstanding the well-established nature of questions of gender within studies
1 Sarah Jackson OBE, Chief Executive of Working Families, <https://www.legalweek.com/Navigation/ 36/Articles/1000155/Addleshaw+Goddard.html>, accessed 1 February 2009.
