Why Study Lawyers?

The Making of Lawyers’ Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession , by Robert L. Nelson, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, Joyce S. Sterling, David B. Wilkins, Meghan Dawe, and Ethan Michelson, is an exhaustive, rigorous, and defining study of the US legal profession in the early twenty-first century. Like the profession itself during this period, its primary focus is on corporate practice and the ripple and sequencing effects of beginning a career in a corporate law firm. This review essay examines the takeaways from the questions that animate the book and considers how populism and rising autocracy will shape future research on lawyers’ careers.