Studies
2 results Restricted
Chicago Lawyers Survey, 1994-1995
Conducted as a partial replication of the CHICAGO LAWYERS SURVEY, 1975 (ICPSR 8218), this 1994-1995 survey sought to analyze the processes of change that transformed the practice of law and the market for legal services over the two decades between 1975 and 1995. Randomly selected Chicago, Illinois, lawyers were asked about, for example, the nature of their work, work settings, fields of practice, job satisfaction, career histories, professional commitment, client characteristics, and social and political values. Results revealed important changes in the legal profession between 1975 and 1995: women entered the profession in substantial numbers, new specialties were created, law firms and corporate legal departments grew dramatically, and in many organizations the practice of law became constrained by bureaucratic rules and procedures. Background information includes state of residence during high school, college or university attended, law school attended, law school class rank, political preference, degree of political party affiliation, religious preference, marital status, nationality, year of birth, income, race, zip code, number of children, work status of spouse, spouse's nationality, respondents' mother's occupation, respondents' mother's law school, respondents' father's occupation, and respondents' father's law school.
This data collection contains information gathered in 1975 on attorneys in Chicago, Illinois. The purpose of this data collection was to describe and analyze the social organization of the legal profession in Chicago. Several major aspects of the legal profession were investigated: the organization of lawyers' work, the social stratification within the Chicago Bar Association, prestige within the profession, lawyers' personal values, career patterns and mobility, networks of association, and the "elites" within the profession. Specific questions elicited information on areas of law in which the respondents spent most of their time practicing, and the ethnicities, educational background, religion, political affiliation, bar association memberships, and sex of respondents' friends and colleagues. Other variables probe respondents' backgrounds, such as father's occupation, home town, law school from which the respondent graduated, religious and political affiliations, ethnicity, sex, and income.