Legal Ethnography: Exploring the Gendered Nature of Legal Method

Lori Beaman-Hall, University of New Brunswick

Beginning with the idea of law as discourse, this essay examines the ways in which legal method is gendered. Texts, such as affidavits and court forms, and local "mundane' practices are part of the production and affwmation of the law as a producer of truth. A possible methodology for exploring legal method, "legal ethnography,' is introduced as a means by which we might explicate how legal method works to support and reify legal discourse, in the process silencing the voices o f women. The essay also explores how legal method comes to be accepted as a "tool o f the trade" by lawyers, who then use it to translate the primary narrative o f the client into a cause of action that is comprehensible to lawyers, judges, and other actors in the legal system. Finally, the limitations of the proposed methodology are considered.

INTRODUCTION
While there is an impressive feminist literature exploring the gendered nature of the content of law' and a corresponding record of feminism's practical accomplishments in the realm of law reform, there is a paucity of theoretical explications of the gendered nature of legal method, empirical studies of the local workings of the 'tools of the trade,' and practical attempts to challenge law's own method. These gaps are surprising given that legal method is part of the privileged discourse we know as law. 2 Lucinda Finley describes law as Among other things, a language, a form of discourse, and a system through which meanings are reflected and constructed and cultural practices are organized. Law is a language of power, a particularly authoritative discourse. Law can pronounce definitively what something is or is not and how a situation or event is to be understood. (1989: 888) The understanding of law as discourse has been central to the work of a number of feminist theorists? including Carol Smart. Smart, who draws on the work of Michel Foucault, 4 understands law not merely as a discourse, but as being at the apex of a hierarchy of discourses that work to silence women? Smart argues that the power of law is its claim to truth, enabling it to remain the central discourse to which other discourses are subservient and around which they are arranged. The status of law is reinforced simply by turning to it 'as if it did indeed hold rightful/correct or efficacious solutions' (1990: 198). Smart, therefore, posits, whenever possible, a decentring of the law as a strategy for I am gratefulfor the helpful suggestionsmade by Chris Doran,GayleMacDonald,and Margaret McCallum on earlier drafts of this essay. I would also like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada for their financial support.

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feminist action (1989). 6 Understanding exactly what we are working to decentre is an integral part of the feminist project in this context. While legal method has been the subject of feminist theorizing,7 the actual work of revealing its gendered nature is far from complete. In this essay, I will examine some of the work that has already been done in the exploration of legal method. Carol Smart's analysis is invaluable to this discussion because legal method is embedded in legal discourse? Texts, including court forms, affidavits, and the contents of women's files, are created using the rules of legal method and are a part of the production and affirmation of law as truth. Smart's understanding of law as discourse provides the context within which this essay is framed. However, Smart's contribution needs to be augmented with contextual methodology/ies that can be used to explore how legal method works at the local level. Mary Jane Mossman's (1986) work on legal method is of central importance to any consideration of the gendered nature of legal method. Although she does not explore legal method at the local level, Mossman's thoughtful analysis reveals both that and how seemingly neutral aspects of legal method are in fact sexist. In the first section I will also demonstrate that research which does attempt to study the local aspects of legal method is strikingly deficient in gender analysis. In the second section of the essaay, I introduce a possible methodology for exploring legal method, based on the work of Dorothy Smith. Like Carol Smart, I do not propose to offer an alternative 'truth.'9 Rather, I wish to suggest some means by which we might further explicate the ways in which legal method works to support and reify legal discourse, and thus to silence the voices of women. The third section of the essay is a discussion of legal method as the 'tool of the trade.' Law students are taught legal method through the analysis of case law, a process that seldom involves challenging the neutrality and objectivity of the very tools they are learning to use. I then examine how the primary narrative of the client is translated (at the intersection of everyday experience and lega! discourse) so as to be a cause of action that is comprehensible to lawyers, judges, other actors in the legal system, and, perhaps even to the client herself. Finally, I discuss some obstacles to the use of legal ethnography as a research tool in exposing the mundane, everyday aspects of legal method. In this section, I consider the effects of these obstacles on women as clients. While this essay does not provide a detailed ~alysis, it is hoped that it will both convince the reader of the urgent need fol- such work,-and offer a point from which to undertake explorations of the 'mundane workings' (Smart 1990: 197) of legal method. FEMINST ANALYSES OF LAW AND GENDER There are two streams of feminist thought that have emerged in relation to legal method: one involves the articulation of feminist legal methods, the other

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centres around the deconstruction of traditional legal method. Although I will briefly review the first stream, this essay is concerned with the latter project, with the caveat that the two are not wholly separable; by explicating the ways in which traditional legal method is gendered, new strategies will undoubtedly emerge. While there is a significant literature on feminist methods/methodologies (Eichler 1990; Harding 1987, 1991; MacKinnon 1987, 19~9, 1991; Smith 1987a, 1987b), little has been done in the area of feminist methods as they are or could be articulated in the legal forum. Boyd and Sheehy (1986) describe the distinction between legal method and feminist method: 'While legal method relies on narrow characterization of issues, use of precedent, and strict construction of statues, feminist methodologies question societal assumptions and fundamentally reject concepts of "objective truths" and "value neutrality (p. 37). ''1~ One notable effort in the area of feminist legal methods is the work of Katharine Bartlett (1990), who identifies three feminist legal methods: consciousness raising, asking the 'woman question,' and fehainist practical reasoning. I will briefly discuss each in turn as they illustrate the desirability of multifaceted strategies and the need to explore traditional legal method in greater detail. MacKinnon (1987) has argued that consciousness raising, that takes place through discussion of shared experiences, is the central component of the empowerment of women, u While I would not ascribe to consciousness raising the absolute centrality MacKinnon (1987) does, 12 it is an integral part of the development of subversive strategies both within and outside of legal discourse. 1~ Bartlett (1990: 837) describes consciousness raising as 'a means of testing the validity of accepted legal principles through the lens of the personal experience of those directly affected by those principles.' Consciousness raising is, however, undermined by traditional legal method which often operates in nearly unobservable places, such as the lawyer's office, and works to separate, rather than to unite, women with similar experiences. Connecting women to women as well as explicating their experiences in relation to legal discourse becomes problematic. Bartlett's (1990) second method - asking the woman question - goes toward addressing the latter difficulty. Asking the woman question means exposing 'how the substance of law may silently and without justification submerge the perspectives of women and other excluded groups' (Bartlett 1990: 236). But, the woman question must go further; the silencing aspects of traditional legal method need to be exposed. While the dichotomy between substance and method is not always clear, ~41will use it to make the point that legal method silences women not only at the level of method, but it may also work to obscure substantive defects in law as well. The systematic sifting out of legally irrelevant experiences may work to obscure the need for changes in substantive law which take into account those excluded experiences. Bartlett's third feminist legal method incorporates a blurring of substance and method.

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Feminist practical reasoning 'expands traditional notions of legal relevance to make legal decision-making more sensitive to the features of a case not already reflected in legal doctrine' (Bartlett 1990: 236-237). Again, determinations of relevance, or the characterization of the issue, is a process that includes confidential solicitor-client interactions. The story is coded before it becomes publicly accessible through court documents or court hearings. Notions of relevance operate prior to 'legal decision-making.' Unless we are fully aware of the silencing aspects of traditional legal method at a mundane level, feminist legal methods will be significantly undermined.15 Feminist work which does investigate the gendered aspects of traditional legal method has focused primarily on reported court cases, courtroom interactions, and lawyers' interpretations of specific cases. 16 While such research adds to our understandings of how legal method works, it does not reveal its everyday, mundane use. Carol Smart's comments illustrate the importance of the exploration of these everyday aspects of legal method: we should not overlook a more routine or mundane aspect to law. On a daily basis members of the public go to lawyers for advice, and the lawyers they consult may never occupy themselves with seeking the correct interpretation of the legal text. It might be argued, for example, that the claim to truth has little to do with the routine of the ordinary legal aid practice. Yet it underlies this practice, even if routine obscures it. Primarily the job of the solicitor is to translate everyday affairs into legal issues. On hearing the client's story, the solicitor sifts it through a sieve of legal knowledge and formulations. Most of the story will be chaff as far as the lawyer is concerned, no matter how significant the rejected elements are to the client. Having extracted what law defines as relevant, it is translated into a foreign language. (Smart 1990: 197.-198) The more pervasive and dangerous aspects of legal method do not occur in the courtroom, but behind the closed doors of the lawyer's office, where the process of sorting out the 'chaff' begins. 'The characterization of the issues' as one aspect of legal method must be interpreted so as to include mundane practices. It is those practices which are virtually inaccessible to the researcher and, as a result, there has been very little empirical research focusing on these secretive interactions. While not an exploration of the mundane aspects of legal method to which Smart refers, Mary Jane Mossman's (1986) work is perhaps the most noteworthy feminist research on traditional legal method to date. Mossman (1986) reviews two cases of historical significance to Canadian women's legal equality in the context of legal method.17 She sets out legal method as including the following elements: 1) the characterization of the issues; 2) the choice of legal precedent to decide the validity of the women's claims, 18 and 3) the process of statutory interpretation, especially in determining the effect of

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statutes to alter common law principles (1986: 38). ~9 Mossman states that traditionally, legal method has operated within a highly structured framework which offers little opportunity for fundamental questioning about the process of defining the issues, selecting relevant principles, and excluding irrelevant ideas' (1986: 32). She analyses how legal method defines its own boundaries and creates its own definition of relevance to the exclusion of some ideas and experiences. Through options in precedent, statutory interpretation, and ideas, there is more opportunity for choice than might fast appear (1986: 45). Mossman concludes that legal method can and does dictate the content of legal cases in political, moral, and gendered ways while allowing the law to hide behind the illusion of neutrality.2~ By remaining detached from its social context, law is able to remain insulated from perceptions that decisions are made on the basis of judges' own moralities and beliefs about gender and gender roles. Mossman is not convinced that the structure of legal method will admit feminist perspectives (1986: 46). This conclusion, coupled with Smart's (1989) advice to resist in alternative forums, might well discourage any further exploration of legal method. However, feminist strategies need to be developed on multiple sites. Mossman may be correct; legal method may well be impervious to feminist perspectives; but, we have barely begun to expose the ways in which legal methods are gendered, let alone to challenge them. Until feminists have done more empirical and theoretical work in relation to legal method, we should heed Mossman as a warning to the potential futility of these efforts and continue on. Unfortunately, little research is available which might provide an indicator of the utility of exploring and challenging legal method. I will briefly describe two related, but limited, studies. Research conducted in California and Boston by Austin Sarat and William L.F. Felstiner (1986) is based on data collected from tape recording 115 conversations between lawyers and clients. Using one such conversation as a point from which to develop their analysis, Sarat and Felstiner examine a number of themes in legal discourse, including the legal construction of the client.21 While they describe a number of interesting findings," the study does not explore the gendered nature of the solicitor/client interactions, except to speculate about female clients' fantasies involving their male lawyers.23 Another study which explores solicitor-client interactions in the context of power relations is that conducted by Carl J. Hosticka (1979). While Hosticka's research gives us some glimpses into the complexities of the mundane aspects of legal methodz4 through the intersection of power and poverty (his study is conducted in a legal aid clinic), he too fails to address gender issues. Given the often devastating economic consequences of marriage/relationship breakdown for women, they are especially vulnerable to the power o f legal discourse. How legal method works to further exacerbate the disadvantaged position of women is virtually unexplored. In summary, what little research has been done involving solicitor/client interactions has not addressed the gendered aspects of legal method as it works

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at the mundane level. These studies also do not seem to develop a full analysis of the connection between the ethnographic and the institutional. Another limitation of previous analyses of legal method is that they have tended to analyze legal processes only in relation to written court decisions; yet, the majority of the discursive practices that work to obscure the everyday experiences of women are located in lawyers' offices. This idea is especially significant given that the vast majority of cases never reach the courtroom. These practices are particularly elusive because they are seen only by the lawyer, who more likely than not, fails to appreciate their significance. In most cases, the client trusts that the lawyer knows what she is doing, or feels unable to challenge the legal process and, therefore, rarely asserts her right to tell her story her way. It is the process of reshaping the story that is known as the characterization of the issue. While Mossman (1986) sets out three aspects of legal method, I have chosen to focus on the characterization of the issue for a variety of reasons: 1) it begins from the very instant the woman/client walks into the lawyer's office; 2) it is insidious in that it is an integral, non-reflexive part of the lawyer's tools; 3) due to solicitor-client confidentiality, it is often invisible. How can we think about this issue so as to develop methodologies that will enable us to better understand the silencing aspects of legal method? How can we deconstruct legal method? Joan W. Scott (1990:137) defines the process of deconstruction as involving the analysis of 'the operations of difference in texts, the ways in which meanings are made to work. The method consists of two related steps: the reversal and displacement of binary oppositions.'Z~ The binary opposition with which we are concerned is the relevant/irrelevant (legal junk) distinction made during the process of the characterization of the issue at the mundane or local level. How are determinations of relevance made in the process of the characterization of the issue as gendered? LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY: A METHOD FOR DECONSTRUCTING LEGAL METHOD The work of Dorothy Smith, a pioneer in revealing the gendered nature of sociological methods,2~ provides a place from which the explication of the gendered nature of legal method may begin. Smith's major contribution is her exposure of the purported neutrality of the tools of the trade in sociological methods as fraudulent. Her critique of sociological method is invaluable to any discussion of method in that it brings forward for scrutiny many of the taken for granted aspects of the methods employed in any given discourse. The gendered aspects of those methods are often invisible until this process is undertaken. In the context of sociology, Smith (1987a, 1988) introduces institutional ethnography as a research slxategy that will help to achieve a sociology reflecting the experiences of women. While Smith (ibid.) advocates beginning with the everyday experiences of individual women (ethnography), the task of

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the sociologist is to go beyond this to explore and explicate the ruling apparatus (institutions) that shapes, organizes, and is reproduced by everyday life. The notion of ruling apparatus extends beyond the state to include: 'that familiar complex of management, government, administration, professions, and inteligentsia, as well as the textually mediated discourses that coordinate and interpenetrate it' (1987: 108). A significant strength of Smith's methodology is not, however, its consideration of institutions as organizers, but her insistence on beginning with the experiences of individual women. By focusing on the primary narrative (the woman's story), institutional ethnography presents opportunities for new ways of seeing that are unavailable through the use of the 'categories of the discourse' (1988: 62). The challenge presented by institutional ethnography is a formidable one: to remain true to the individual's experience while at the same time moving the level of analysis beyond the individual. For example, beginning with her own experiences as a single parent attempting to deal with her child's school and moving to other women's experiences, Smith (1987a: 173), through her own methodology, discovers how the classroom 'is embedded in a hierarchy of administrative and political processes.' She concludes that class is reproduced through the classroom (Smith 1987a: 174). It is this type of relationship, normally obscured by traditional methodologies, that institutional ethnography can reveal. Jill McCalla Vickers (1989: 44-53) describes five methodological rebellions of feminist research: 1) the rebellion against decontextualization; 2) the rebellion to restore agency; 3) the rebellion against reversal,274) the rebellion against objectivity, and; 5) the rebellion against linearity, inevitability, and laws. Dorothy Smith's work reflects these rebellions through her insistence on the contextualization of both local activities and their relation to institutional organization and her demand that research begin with the experiences of individual women as actors rather than objects. It is these aspects of Smith's work which any methodology for the exploration of legal method should seek to retain. The use ofethnographies to understand legal processes is not new. S udnow's significant ethnographic research on plea bargaining in the context of criminal court proceedings is perhaps the best known example of this type of work in the legal setting.2s The disadvantage of Sudnow's approach from a feminist perspective is that it fails to expose power relations in the context of the courtroom and in legal discourse. Smith's methodology remedies this problem by extending beyond the site of the ethnographic exploration to the structural aspects of oppression. Otherwise stated, Smith enables us to connect the local to the institutional. Other studies have attempted to expose power relations in different contexts. For example, Donald H. Zimmerman (1974) describes the disjuncture between the story of the public welfare recipient/client (the primary narrative) and the creation of the facts by the intake worker. Zimmerman goes further than simply

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explicating this process to identify the authority of the document as a representation of the 'facts' in relation to the story as it is told by the client. The textually-worked-up-facts provide the account that is recognized and which enters the institutional discourse. Although Zimmerman reveals how texts are connected to and reproduce larger organizational schema,29 his work in this area, like that of S udnow (1965), S arat and Felstiner (1986) and Hostika (1979), is devoid of gender analysis. Similar work which focuses specifically on women is Roxana Ng's (1988, 1989) research on immigrant women and their 'processing' through an employment agency. Ng (1988) too explores the use of documents in defining issues and their disjuncture with clients' stories/lived realities. Ng explicitly employs Smith's methodology in her study and describes institutional ethnography as seeking 'to locate the dynamics of a local setting in the complex institutional relations organizing the local dynamics' (1988: 19).3~ It is especially the dynamics of the local working of legal method that have yet to be exposed. What Smith says about sociological methods may be able to be transposed to legal discourse: how law is conceptualized - its methods, conceptual schemes, and theories - has been based on and built up within the male social universe, even when women have participated in its doing (Smith 1990a: 13). While feminists have begun to challenge the male bias of law, we have yet to undertake the same project with similar intensity in relation to legal method. There is little reason to believe that legal method does not reflect a male worldview, and it is therefore probable that, when certain parts of a story are discarded as 'legal junk,' that process is guided by male assessments and interpretations of relevance. Dorothy Smith's institutional ethnography can be used as the basis for a methodology that will facilitate the exploration of legal method as gendered. Since this methodology will explore one institution in particular, I will refer to itas legal ethnography. A legal ethnography would seek to explore, beginning with the client's story, how the primary narrative of a woman's experience is transformed into a legally-relevant package of information. It would recover those aspects of her story that are determined to be irrelevant in the process of the characterization of the issue. The explication of the connection between often invisible categories (to the client and, as will be discussed in the next section, possibly to the lawyer) categories of legal discourse, and the workedup version of the client's story would also be a goal of this methodology. Equally, if not more importantly, would be the exposure of hidden determinants of relevance and their relation to the excluded aspects of the story. To paraphrase Smith, legal ethnography would disclose how women's stories are organized and determined by legal processes that are not 'knowable through the ordinary means through which we find out about our everyday world' (1988: 63). The silencing of women by legal method could be explored at both the

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individual level and as something experienced by women as a systemic bias. In other words, one goal of a legal ethnography would be to explicate patterns of exclusion in the characterization of the issue. While legal ethnography might be employed to explore other aspects of legal discourse, such as deficiencies in substantive law, it is legal method which has remained elusive to feminist discourse about law. In order to further contextualize the need for empirical and theoretical work on the gendered nature of the workings of the mundane aspects of legal method, I will begin where Smith (1987a) began in her critique of sociological methods; with the "tools of the trade". THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE Legal methodis the'tool' of the legal 'trade.' Itis used to characterize the issue through the process of working up the primary narrative of the client to the 'facts' of the case that are often eventually encased in some textual form. In law school, students read massive numbers of documents, usually case law, with the expectation that they will extract from those documents the salient points. This procedure is part of learning to characterize the issue (which means disposing of the irrelevant material in order to get to the relevant issues), a process portrayed as being neutral and objective. As Margaret Thornton (1986: 16) argues, 'the favouring of a narrow, doctrinal, atheoretical approach to legal education, which eschews critical consideration of the wider contextual and ideological role of law, ensures the perpetration of the myth of neutrality of legalism.' Narrowing techniques are furtherpromulgated through baradmission courses. Trainees are provided with advice and textual models prepared by senior members of the profession. Advice might include the following: Many clients will, if given the opportunity, carry on with irrelevant and immaterial trivial facts which are useless to the file. Without being offensive, the experienced lawyer will lead the client in a fixed and orderly manner in order to obtain material facts,n The client's story is to be ordered by a schema of discourse which is not available in the primary narrative (Smith 1990a: 165). What is 'useless' to the file is a matter of legal construction, not a reflection of the importance of the issues in the client's life. Legal skills are transposed when the student becomes a practitioner and begins to deal with 'real-life' clients. These skills are the tools of legal discourse that become part of a lawyer's stock and trade. Learning to think 'like a lawyer' means learning to characterize a client's story as a legal problem. It means being skilled at separating relevant, as defined by legal discourse, aspects of the client's story from the context of the client's life.

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The creation and interpretation of texts are integral to the legal processing of a case. Texts are the means by which local practices enter legal discourse. Yet those practices are not admitted in an unmediated form. The lawyer must "code' the story so that it can be understood within the framework of legal discourse. Texts in this context take a number of forms: checklists or questionnaires, letters to other solicitors, letters to the client, and pre-structured forms such as divorce petitions,32 and finally, affidavits. Although prestructured forms are more blatant in their exclusiveness, affidavits that purport to tell the client's story (in legal language represent the client's position) are also structured by considerations of legal relevance. They are usually structured so as to mirror requirements of the applicable Act. These pre-packaged determinants of relevance enable the practitioner to expedite the conduct of the case through the ready identification of relevant facts, and to allow for the quick disposition of 'irrelevant and immaterial' facts. While the 'resulting factual account may be entirely accurate, [but] the order that provides its grammar, its logic, and the connectives sequencing its clauses will be provided by schemata originating in the discourse rather than by an explication of actual social relations' (Smith 1988: 170). In the present context, these schemata include considerations of relevance inherent tOthe process of the characterization of the issue. Dorothy Smith (1990b: 49) defines irrelevant material as 'material which neither (a) establishes the adequacy of the authorization procedures used nor (b) is appropriate to and can hence be appropriated interpretively by the conceptual framework.' Smith goes on to argue that, in the context of social organization, the reader/hearer does not have the advantage of being able to go back to the experiencer to gather information from which to construct alternative accounts. She contrasts this process with the court of law in which witnesses may provide information that can form the basis for alternative accounts. Smith's conclusions should be used cautiously. The legal organization of primary narratives takes place long before a person ever appears as a witness in a courtroom. In the usually lengthy process of defining legal relevance and working up the case, the client may come to accept the legallyrelevant version as her own. Even if her case goes to court (most family law cases do not), any attempt by her to reshape her story as it appears in court documents may threaten her credibility before the court. She will likely not undertake such a course of action where the custody of her children and her or their economic future is at stake. 33 Thus the client will probably accept the version of her story created from the legally-relevant facts identified by her lawyer. 34 The problem with an education that trains lawyers to hone their distillation skills is that it has a non-reflexive character in that it becomes second nature for the lawyer. For the most part, students are not trained to think about why some things are relevant and others are not. Nor are they told about the distress they will cause their clients when they dismiss out of hand some parts of their stories

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as being irrelevant to the legal issue. Questions about whose interests are represented in the process of characterizing the issue are stilled by the myth of the neutrality of law, and by implication, legal method. The gendered aspects of legal processes are thus frequently ignored. Yet even when they are not overlooked, there remains the expectation that the newly-graduated lawyer will possess and use the sifting skills she has been taught. 3s In this context, recognition of gender issues does not translate into considerations of how practice reinforces gendered organization. Mary Jane Mossman (1986) has articulated the difficulties this process may pose for feminist lawyers. Mossman posits the possibility that'for the feminist who is also a lawyer, the effort of "double think" may be both taxing and ultimately frustrating; the needs of clients require her to become highly proficient at legal method at the same time as her feminist commitment drives her to challenge the validity of its underlying rationale' (1986: 45). 36 In the following section I will describe how and explain why the primary narrative of the client is discarded for the facts. LEGAL METHOD AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ISSUE: FROM PRIMARY NARRATIVE TO THE FACTS Jane comes to my office. She is distraught and begins to cry almost as soon as she arrives. She sits across from me and I ask her why she has come to see me. She replies: Last night John came home and said he was leaving to live with a friend... I don't why he left ... I thought things were going alright ... so anyway, I started crying, and then the kids started crying because they knew that I was upset.., he said all of this in front of the kids, you know.., then the kids asked me if daddy was leaving because they were bad ... well that just made it worse.., and he called me a useless bitch and then he slammed the door and left. From this narrative, after establishing the legal relationship between Jane and John - married or cohabitees - Jane's story will be reconstructed as a legal issue. Extracted from Jane's story is the idea that: 'Jane and John are living separate and apart.' The anxiety of the children and the pain Jane is suffering is obscured as Jane's story is translated into a legal cause of action. In his work on social workers, Zimmerman (1974) argues that the applicant is seen as a course of action. In legal discourse, a similar process occurs in the distilling of the client's story into facts which connect to a legal cause of action. As Drucilla ComeU (1991:109) points out, if a woman's 'claim still cannot be adequately translated, her harm goes unnoticed. If she lies completely outside the current representation of justice, her harm, and indeed her very self disappears.' The primary narrative is dissected, selections made, and then the story is reassembled in a manner that supports and is supported by legal discourse. This

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organization of consciousness is guided by legal discourse which is, for the most part, unseen by the client, except for occasional explanatory tid-bits offered by the lawyer. How can we understand the reframing of the story, a process which occurs in a multitude of disciplines? Smith (1990b) offers insight into this question in the context of her discussion of 'K is mentally ill.' In that analysis, Smith deconstructs the process by which K is assessed by her friends and by a student interviewer as being mentally ill. Smith explicates in detail the construction of social facts surrounding K, K's disqualification from that process, and how the 'facts' are worked up to enter the discourse of mental illness. At a general level, the reconstitution of a story into the facts works to maintain the authority of medical discourse. The same can be said about the reconstitution of the primary narrative of the legal client. The stories of women are obscured as they are replaced by facts created by more qualified story tellers, be they psychologists or lawyers or, in the case of K's friends, those who more closely conform to ideals of normality. Smith (1990b: 48) offers further insight into this process. She identifies what she calls 'authorization rules,' defined as the criteria to be used by the reader/hearer in determining the adequacy of the description and the credibility of the account. Legal rules of authorization give automatic primacy to the account of the lawyer.37 In her study of female law-breakers, ~ Anne Worrall (1990: 20) describes the role of the solicitor as being 'to occupy that gap between the defendant's account and the magistrates recognition of that account. The solicitor's task is to negotiate the precise route whereby that gap is closed. It is a task which requires both skill and authority.' Clearly, the lawyer's account becomes the accepted version of 'the facts.' The lawyer works to keep the 'messy stuff" out of the courtroom. Worrall describes legal representation as: a process of defending the court against the unacceptablity of the layperson's common sense which, unlike magisterial common sense, is perceived to be 'out of place, out of time, out of mind and out of order' ... and consequently a dangerous intrusion in the proceedings. (1990: 19) The analysis of the rules of authorization which see the lawyer's account as valid and the client's account as an intrusion is particularly tricky in law, because lawyers claim to be acting in the interests of their clients and on their clients' instructions. Worrall (1990: 22) discusses the artificial nature of the lawyers' claims to action on the basis of client's instructions. The notion of 'taking instructions' masks the power relations involved in the solicitor/client relationship.39 The implication is that they, as servants, articulate with confidence and competence in public that which the defendant has said nervously and

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haltingly in private. But what in fact happens in that a privileged discourse is constructed from the broken utterances of the powerless. Discontinuity is rendered continuous, contradiction rendered coherent, and fragmentation rendered unified. A grid is placed over the circumstances and emotions of the defendant and a recognizable reading obtained. The idea that the client controls the direction of the process obscures the ways in which legal method serves to narrowly determine which aspects of the client's story and the client's life are relevant.4~ The primary narrative is also translated4t into legalese for the benefit of the profession (Smith 1990b: 48). If the facts are properly worked up, all members of the profession should be able to identify the cause of action or the legal relevance of the facts presented. This analysis has subtle dimensions in law, for the cause of action must be explicitly stated; therefore, there is no guessing as to whether this is a divorce or a custody hearing. However, seemingly simple statements in legal documents, such as an affidavit, have referents that are only likely to be identified by other members of the profession or those who are extremely familiar with legal discourse. Returning to Jane, introduced at the beginning of this section, the statement 'Jane and John are living separate and apart' implies, among other things, that Jane can petition for divorce under the Divorce Act. But the lawyer shapes the story, not only for its presentation to the profession, but also for the client. The story is re-presented to the client, who may come to accept a new, legally-coded version of the story as her own. This acceptance is especially true if the matter actually goes to court. The lawyer 'prepares' the client for trial, a process that involves reviewing the client's story in the framework constructed by legal discourse. This review may involve a further fine-tuning of the client's story. The characterization of the issue is a dynamic process, involving the continuous reshaping of the story depending on the forum - the courtroom or the affidavit. In the process of the characterization of the issue, as has been argued, documents/texts play a central role. Smith (1990b) points out that the operation of a text depends on the reader's interpretive practices which are social in origin. In the context of legal texts, such a dependence has serious implications for women. Not only is the woman/client's story distilled into legal factual form by the lawyer, but it is then interpreted by a judge. We are still at a point, unfortunately,42when we can assume that the judge will likely be male, one who may further obscure the woman's reality through the imposition of male-centred interpretive practices. But texts only represent part of the translation of the story. There are other, more invisible practices involved in the characterization of the issue that take place behind the closed doors of the lawyer's office, and that, through ethical rules of confidentiality governing the legal profession, are almost excluded from examination. 43

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ETHICAL BOUNDARIESOBSTACLES TO LEGAL ETHNOGRAPHY The Code of Professional Conduct provides for lawyers directives on the ethical aspects of the practice of law. Chapter Four is dedicated to the discussion of 'confidential information.' The rule states:
The lawyer has a duty to hold in strict confidence all information concerning the business and affairs of the client acquired in the course of the professional relationship, and should not divulge such information unless disclosure is expressly or implicitly authorized by the client, required by law or otherwise permitted or required by this Code. The 'guiding principles' attempt to clarify any ambiguities. 3 As a general rule, the lawyer should not disclose having been consulted or retained by a person unless the nature of the matter requires such disclosure. 4 The lawyer owes a duty of secrecy to every client without exception, regardless of whether it be a continuing or casual client. The duty survives the professional relationship and continues indefinitely after the lawyer has ceased to act for the client, whether or not differences have arisen between them. This secrecy pertains to both the identity of the client mad the nature/content of the client's case. Rules of solicitor client confidentiality have a number of effects: they obscure the process by which a woman's story is coded to enter legal discourse, they prevent women from sharing their stories, and they prevent criticallyminded lawyers*~ (and others) from developing assessments of the local workings of legal method based on their experiences in practice. The latter difficulty has been well documented by Danet, Hoffman, and Kermish (1980) in their attempted study of solicitor/client interactions in the Boston area. Eventually aborted,45 the study was an attempt to explore language and its use in the transformation of clients' stories for entry into legal discourse. In a discussion of the failure of their study Danet, Hoffman, and Kermish (1980) identify rules of solicitor-client privilege as a major obstacle to much-needed social science research in the area of solicitor-client interactions.46 This veil of secrecy is especially harmful to women who are frequently excluded from the social support networks available to men. The development of subversive tactics necessarily involves (I think) communications between women about their experiences within legal discourse. While many women who enter the realm of legal discourse also have contact

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with an endless parade of service providers, they seldom have contact with each other. The diffusion of political activism that could potentially arise out of such contact is facilitated by ethical rules preserving solicitor/client confidentiality. For example, women feel frustration when their stories are reshaped into legal discourse through the process of the characterization of the issue. Subjective meanings are lost because of the individual nature of their entry into that process. Rules of confidentiality ensure that women as clients remain isolated, alienated units - perfect liberal models of freely contracting 'selves.'47 The potential explosion of collective anger over their treatment is diffused by artificial ethical constructs such as solicitor/client confidentiality. While male lawyers drop 'big' client's names to each other on the golf course, it is a breach of confidentiality for women to connect their female clients who have suffered indignities imposed by law and legal method. The limitations of solicitor/client confidentiality pose some difficulties for the use of legal ethnography. Clearly, the most important story, that of the client (the primary narrative), will not always be available. The mundane and the local may not be readily recoverable. One possible remedy to this may be to construct a pseudo-primary narrative, to use Chris Doran's (1992: 23) phrase, based on the available information. Smith (1990a) has employed this technique; however, as is illustrated in Doran's analysis (1992:21-31; 1993), the consequence may be simply to replace one privileged version of the primary narrative with another.4s Alternative, non-legal (decentred) strategies may therefore have an important role to play. If awareness of the potentially gendered nature of legal method is heightened, as more and more feminist are able to converse in legal discourse, they may develop both local solutions (such as encouraging women to tell their stories in other forums) and feminist legal methods. As well, they may be better able and more willing to expose the biased nature of traditional (malestream) legal methods. They may demand new conceptualizations of relevance, a process that has to some extent already begun in the area of substantive law.49 My point is not that we should abandon ethical rules of confidentiality; but, that, too often, they are accepted as neutral in their application and effects. The benefits of maintaining the private sphere of the lawyer's office need to be reviewed. As a mechanism that may obscure the working of the process of characterization of the issue, ethical rules need to be taken very seriously as potential partners in the collusion of law in the perpetration of the silencing of women's oppression. CONCLUSION The exploration of the mundane aspects of legal method through legal ethnography is not an all-encompassing strategy. Obviously, it must be accompanied by other efforts, including substantive law reform; 5~the use of local, non-legal

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solutions that act to decentre the law; and the continued articulation, exploration, and use of feminist legal methods. As Carol Smart (1989: 6) points out, women have had a tendency to rely too much on law as a solution to their systematic discrimination. Smart argues for what she calls a 'decentring' of the l a w - a displacement of law from its position at the apex of the hierarchy of discourses. Given the obstacles to a legal ethnography that begins with an exploration of the mundane, Smart's strategy is valuable. For example, some practitioners have developed solutions to the barriers of legal ethics; feminist lawyers have learned to connect their clients to women's centres and other women-centred services in the hopes of facilitating contact among women. In contrast to grand theories, these solutions have emerged at the local level in order to meet the specific needs of individual women. If we can claim that Smart's (1989) argument for a decentring of the law encompasses the decentring of legal method, then surely this type of local, specific solution that will serve to empower women rather than increasing their dependence on law and their vulnerability to legal method. This is not to say that legal ethnography is impossible; but, it cannot be relied upon as the singular strategy. Empirical attempts to explore the mundane aspects of legal method will reveal subtle aspects of the gendered nature of legal method that have not yet been recovered. By exploring the process of the characterization of legal issues as an exclusionary process enacted at the mundane level that reproduces law as a truth, we can begin to expose the gendered nature of that which is excluded. Through the explication of these processes, we can connect the local or the everyday to the institutional. As has been discussed, there are obstacles not encountered in other discourses that may mean mundane practices will have to be recovered not by proceeding from the everyday practice of law to the institutional, but where necessary, from the courtroom to the lawyer's office. While such a situation is not ideal, and indeed every day practices may well be beyond recovery, the discovery of the mundane practices at the local level, however partial, is a worthwhile endeavour. It is critical to search out the ways by which legal method acts to maintain women's oppression in whatever form that may take - for individual women and for women as a group. Feminist strategies must be multi-sited and multifaceted, reflecting the diverse nature of women's lives. Empirical work that begins with women's stories and explicates how they are reshaped behind the closed doors of lawyer's offices to conform to categories mandated by legal discourse is one such strategy.

NOTES
MacKinnon says: 'I propose that the state is male in the feminist sense. The law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women' (1987: 13). Lucinda M. Finley takes a similar position: 'legal language and reasoning is gendered, and that gender matches the male gender

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4 5

10

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of its linguistic architects' (1989: 192). Later in the same article, she refers tolegal reasoning and language as male (1989: 193). Kathleen A. Lahey describes law as patriarchal (1989: 100). Carrie Menkel-Meadow also, describes law, at least historically, as male (1992:1493). Robin West discusses modem jurisprudence as masculine (1988: 58). Throughout the essay, I will draw from my experience in nearly five years of legal practice that centred mainly on family law. Most of my clients were women, many of them relying on provinciallegal aid to pay for theirlegal services. It is primarily women who must seek support for themselves and for their children from men. Women enterlegal discourse in order to retain the right to continue to raise their children, hoping that their economically disadvantaged position will not work against them. During my years in practice, it became apparent that women's powerlessness is exacerbated by the law and by legal method. Obviously Finley (1989), also Worrall (1990), Smart(1989), and Scott (1990). Smith 0987: 214), although not specifically in the context of the law, develops a broad norion of discourse, including conversations mediated by texts that are 'understood as embedded in and organizing relations among subjects active in the discourse.' Smart (1990:197), while drawing on Foucauli (1989, Chapter 1), also distinguishes her work from his. The most important difference is the centrality of women to Smart's analysis. I do not necessarily agree with Smart's placement of law as central. Annie Bunting (1992: 841) articulates a related criticism. She states: 'Smart concedes too much to the law in her contentions regarding the resilience of thelaw in the face of feminlst discourses. In this respect she herself may overinflate the law and its powers.' Bunting(1992:841)alsocriricizesSmartonthisground. Shestates:'lawasadlscourseought not to be given special treatment by feminists by ignoring possible strategies relevant to women. To leave policies unexamined and static presents more risks than participating in an exclusionary category.' The development of alternative discourses as well as strategies involving the law are not mutually exclusive. Kathleen Lahey (1989:100) states in relarion to legal method: 'feminists have concluded that the terms in which legal discourse is conducted are projections of masculinist subjectivity, which men are able to transform into (false) universals by virtue of the power they can exert to enforce their views.' Susan Boyd 0991: 97) discusses one of the advantages of Smart's work in relation to discourse analysis:' One limitation inherent in discourse analysis is that it does not give a clear sense of how discourses are constituted and reproduced, nor how some discourses come to be more powerful and privileged than others. Carol Smart's recent work takes us some distance toward doing this by arguing that law as a form of discourse makes claims to troth; law thus can disqualify 'subjugated knowledges' such as women's knowledge." Katharine Bartlett (1990) proposes that feminists must develop ways to both deconstmct and then reconstruct legal methods. She says:'Feminists need a stance toward knowledge that takes into account the contingency of knowledge claims while allowing for a concept of truth or objectivity that can sustain an agenda for meaningful reform' (1990: 879). She argues for what she calls positionality, which allows for the positing of truth, but as partial and situated (1990:880-887). Unlike Bartlett, I do not propose in this essay to offer feminist legal methods. Bartlett (1990: 832) makes a similar comparison: 'Traditional legal methods place a high premium on the predictability, certainty and fixity of rules. In contrast, feminist legal methods which have emerged from the critique that existing rules overrepresent existing power structures, value rule-flexibility and the ability to identify missing points of view.' Both Smart (1989) and Smith (1990b: 2) acknowledge the usefulness of consciousness raising. Through consciousness raising, women can at least attempt to subvert the denial of access to information and explanatory constructs that have frequently grounded their oppression (see Gerda Lemer 1993, for a developed analysis of this theme, p. 5 for her introduction of this theme). MacKinnon's work has been criticized by some as attempting to create grand theory and grand solutions - of being essentialist. For one such critique, see Angela Harris (1990). For a defence of MacKinnon, see Elizabeth Rappaport (1992). For MacKinnon's own comments on this issue, see MacKinnon (1991). The problem of essentialism is presently a central concern for feminists. I have avoided a specific discussion of essentialism in this essay as it

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is a topicin and of itself. My proposal for muhifaceted strategies addresses (it is hoped) at least at some minimal level the essentialism issue. Smith's (1987a, 1987b) methodology is, in my view, inherently non-essentialist in that it begins with and preserves the situated subjecL There are some criticisms of consciousness raising as central. Smart, for example, argues that 'it is also not dear why the process of consciousness-raising should "tap" Woman's experience rather than the experience of women as constructed by men' (1989: 78); Worrall (1990: 7) argues that consciousness raising in itself is not enough because it assumes both that knowledge leads to change and that the self is 'potentially as powerful as the sources which constitute "society." Bartlett addresses this issue as well; she acknowledges that legal methods shape substance (1990: 844). For a discussion, see Scales (1986: 73). See, for examplc, T. BrettelDawson (1987), Anne WorraU (1990), Gayle MacDonald (1993), and Mossman (1986). Those cases were: In re French (1905), 37 N.B.R. 359; Edwards v. A.G.for Canada, [1930] AC 124. Anne WorraU ( 1990: 20) says about prec.edent: q f legal reasoning were as rigid as the doctrine of precedent suggests, there would be no need for the eloquence and rhetoric of lawyers, for the facts would speak for themselves." In describing Mossman's work, Carol Smart sets legal method out as including boundary definition, defining relevance, and case analysis (1989: 21). Katherine O'Donovan (1989: 130) points out that 'the American legal realists, who were sceptical of the f'mding of facts and rules in the legal process, made a similar point. But they did not bring out the political nature of the exclusion of viewpoints.' Scales (1986) makes a similar point. They describe the legal construction of the client as 'what the legal process values in human character and what it wishes toignore, what the process validatcs and what it leaves for others to reinforce' (1986: 96). For example, they identify a conflict between the client's desires - in their case vindication and those of the lawyer, who wishes to reach a seulement (1986:112). Sarat and Felstiner state in relation to the specific dient whose story they use to develop their ideas: 'The transference reflected in her reference to a "knight in shining armour," a female client's substitudou of her male lawyer for her failed husband, may not be unusual in divorce cases, but nowhere in our sample is it as explicit as it is here' (1986:113-114). Given that the majority of family law practitioners are female, and assuming the heterosexuality of many of the clients, this speculation seems particularly unproductive. Hostika (t979) makes interesting use of the concepts of floor control, or the use of conversational time, and topic control in his analysis of lawyer-client interactions. For an interesting discussion of the artificial creation of opposites in the criminal law, see Marguerite RusseU (1989). At a broader level, the 'ideological nature of much previous sociology' (Doran 1992:31 ). For a detailed critique of Smith, see Doran (1992, 1993). A good example of reversal is what Wormll (1990) describes as 'taking instruction' from the client. This concept is used to imply that women freely make choices in the processing of their cases which are uninhibited by legal discourse or, more specifically, by legal method. See, for example, Sudnow (1965). Zimmerman and West (I 975) also explore issues relating to gender using methods informed by ethnomethodology. For other works which addresses similar issues, see Kathy E. Ferguson (1984) and Gillian Walker (1990). New Brunswick Bar Admission materials, section 2-2. Hosticka (1979: 603) found in his study that forms play a central role in the interviewing of the client.
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For a discussion of this idea. see Richard Neely (1984). This article is especially interesting because it is written by a judge who illustrates his points with examples from his practice as a lawyer. John P. McKendy makes a similar observation in his study of the ideological practices involved in a program for wife abusers: 'Individuals transformed into 'clients' often came to accept as reasonable, accurate, and helpful the accounts of their lives and behaviour offered by the professional. Clients learn how to recognize the problem, as it is being shaped by the professional discourse as "their problem"' (1992: 63), Lahey states: 'only women who meet male-deFmed criteria and who speal~ in voices acceptable to men are really welcome to participate in legal discourse" (1989: 100). For a discussion of legal education as a tool for the reproduction of male values see Mary O'Brien and Sheila McIntyre (1987). Dorothy Smith's (1987b) work on bifurcated consciousness could certainly contribute to a more extensive analysis of this problem. For a discussion, although Smith is not explicitly mentioned, see Seidenberg (1985). On this theme, Sarat and Felstiner note: 'The major ingredient of this settlement system is the primacy of the lawyers. They produce the deals while the chents are limited to initial instructions and after-the-fact ratification' (1986: 110). From my experience, the court appearance of someone who was 'unrepresented' was considered to be an annoyance - not because she may be at a disadvantage, but because she did not know how to recreate her story to fit into legal discourse. In other words, she did not know how to characterize the issues. Worrall (1990) talks about the repackaging of the female law breaker in the context of normalization, a practice which involves the inclusion and exclusion of parts of the client's story. This is, in many ways, simply another twist on the characterization of the issue, which is inseparably linked to the characterization of the client. Kathleen Labey's (1991) discussion ofthe tension between legal (grand) theory and women's specfficities adds another dimension to the artificial construct of 'taking instructions.' The notion that the client is in control contributes to the illusion that women's specificities are in fact being taken into account. But what is more likely happening is that both the individual woman's story as well as the more systematic oppression of women as a group are effectively obscured. The creation of 'the case' harms both women and woman. The notion of the taking of instructions may also be operating at another level in relation to women and family law. Practitioners acknowledge that in many instances men cbmrol women through their children on marriage/relationship breakdown. We know that the majority of family cases never go before the courts. Many women are so fearful of losing custody of their children that they are willing to accept settlements that leave themselves and their children living in poverty. How do women come to make these decisions7 An exploration of this issue may involve aspects of legal method other than/in addition to the characterization of the issue previously outlined in this essay. My point is until research exploring this process is undertaken, we cannot appreciate the extent to which legal method/legal discourse contributes to the poverty of women and children. Maureen Cain (I 979) uses the term 'translating' to describe the specific practice of lawyers. She states: 'Clients bring many issues to the solicitor, expressed and constituted in terms of a variety of everyday discourse. The lawyer translates these, and reconstitutes the issues in terms of a legal discourse which has transitional applicability' (1979: 335). For a discussion of the possibility that women on the bench will make a difference, see Madame Justice Wilson (1993). Although the Professional Code of Ethics for lawyers permits some disclosure with client' permission, there is still the chance that the client will not fully understand the purpose for which the lawyer would require their permission. In other words consent would not be informed consent. Further, the Code implies that the lawyer's purposes could be construed as unethical - self aggrandizement - rather than something of broader use (research which might expese patriarchal biases of legal method). See, for example, comment 5 under the rule dealing with confidentiality. Finally, my ethics would not allow me to seek consent from m y former clients. I feel that because of the personal nature of their consultation with me,

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particularly those women who were victims of abuse, and the power imbalance between myself and some of my clients, that the use of their stories would be exploitation. Danet, Hoffman, and Kermish (1980:9 I0) acknowledge the relative rarity of lawyers engaged in practice to also undertake social sciences research. In a random sample of 400 Boston University Law School Alumni, they were unable to fred any lawyers who would agree to participate in the study. The authors argue that the problem is not only an ethical one, but a legal problem as well. In other words, the entry of a third party into the solicitor/client conversation may actually eliminate the confidential nature of the communication, thus ending the privilege. The researcher might therefore be called to give evidence against the client (1980: 909). Cain (1979: 333) says, 'Lawyers are responsible for individualizing and de-politicizing issues.' Razack (1991: 13-15) also discusses the legal process as excluding women's experiences because of its understanding of the legal subject as individual. Thornton connects this idea to legal education: 'Problems are portrayed as individualistic, with individual solutions attained by means of the adversarial process within a formal court setting with its semblance of equality between the parties' (1986: 17). Gayle MacDonald uses interviews with lawyers to begin to bridge the gap between text and primary narrative (1993). Two specific examples come to mind: discuasions about the relevance of past sexual conduct in the rape trial and the introduction of the Battered Woman Syndrome as a defence strategy. As Menkel-Meadow (1992) points out, decentring can take anumberofforms. She describes MacKinnon's (1987) attempt tO have pornography defined from the perspective of what is considered harmful, hurtful, or offensive to women as a decentring of the subject of law ( 1992:

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Finley, Lucinda M. 1989. 'Breaking Women's Silence in Law: The Dilemma of the Gendered Nature of Legal Reasoning.' Notre Dame Law Review, 64 (5): 886-910 Harding, Sandra. 1990. 'Feminism, Science, and the Anti-Enhghtenment Critiques,' in Linda J. Nicholson, ed., Ferrdnism/Postmodernlsm, 83-106. New York and London: RouLledge - 1991. Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking From Women's Lives. New York: ComeU University Press Harris, Angela. 1990. 'Race and Essentialism in Feminist Legal Theory.' Stanford Law Review, 42 (Feb.): 581-616 Hosticka, Carl J. 1979. 'We Don't Care About What Happened, We Only Care About What is Going to Happen: Lawyer-Client Negotiations of Reality.' Social Problems, 26 (5): 599-610 Lahey, Kathleen A. 1989. 'Celebration and Struggle: Feminism and Law,' in Angela Miles and Geraldine Finn, eds., Feminism: From Pressure to Politics, 99-122. Montreal: Black Rose 1991. 'On Silences, Screams and Scholarship: An Introduction to Feminist Legal Theory.' in Richard F. Devlin, cal.,Feminist Legal Theory, 47-64. Toronto: Edmond Publications Limited Lemer, Gerda. 1993. The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen Seventy. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press MacDonald, Gayle. I993. 'The Contribution of Social Science Method to Uncovering Sexism in Law,' in Joan Brockman and Dorothy Churn, eds., Investigating Gender Bias: Law, Courts and the Legal Profession, 63-75. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing Inc. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1987. 'Feminism, Marxism, Method, and the State: Toward a Feminist Jurisprudence,' in Sandra Harding, ed., Feminism and Methodology, 135-156. Bloomington, In: Indiana University Press - 1989. Toward a Feminist Theory of the State. Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press - 1991. 'From Practice to Theory, or What is a White Woman Anyway?' }'ale Journal of Law and Feminism, 4 (1): 13-22 Maynard, Douglas W., and John F. Manzo. 1993. 'On the Sociology of Justice: Theoretical Notes From an Actual Jury Dehberation.' Sociological Theory, 11 (2): 171-193 McKendy, John P. 1992. 'Ideological Practices and the Management of Emotions: The Case of "Wife Abusers."' Critical Sociology, 19 (2): 61-80 Menkel-Meadow, Carrie. 1992. 'Mainstrearning Feminist Legal Theory.' Pacific Law Review, 23 (4): 1493-1542 Mossman, Mary Jane. 1986.'Feminism and Legal Method: The Difference It Makes.' Australian Journal of Law and Society, 3:30-52 Neely, Richard. 1984. 'The Primary Caretaker Parent Rule: Child Custody and the Dynamics of Greed.' Yale Law and Policy Rev&w, 3 (1): 168 Ng, Roxana. 1988. The Politics of Community Serv&e: Immigrant Women, Class and State. Toronto: Garamond Press 1990. 'State Funding to a Community Employment Centre: Implications for Working with Immigrant Women,' in Roxana Ng, Gillian Walker and Jacob Miller, eds., Community, Organization and the State, 165-183. Toronto: Garamond Press O'Brien, Mary, and Sheila Mcintyre. 1987. 'Patriarchal Hegemony and Legal Education.' Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 2 (1): 69-95 O'Donovan, Katherine. 1989. 'Engendering Justice: Women's Perspectives and the Rule of Law.' University of Toronto Law Journal, 39:127 Rapaport, Elizabeth. 1992. 'Generalizing Gender: Reason and Essence in the Legal Thought of Catharine MacKinnon,' in V. Spike Peterson, ed., Gendered State: Feminist (Re)visions of International Relations, 127-143. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers Razack, Sherene. 1991. Canadian Feminism and the Law: The Women's Legal Education and Action Fund and the Pursuit of Equality. Toronto: Second Story Press Russell, Marguerite. 1989. 'A Feminist Analysis of the Criminal Trial Process.' Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 3 (2): 552 Sarat, Austin, and William L.F. Felstiner. 1986. 'Law and Strategy in the Divorce Lawyer's Office.' Law and Society Rev&w, 10 (I): 93-134

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