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Original Articles

‘Love Law, Love Life’: Neoliberalism, Wellbeing and Gender in the Legal Profession—The Case of Law School

Richard Collier Professor, Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University, UK. The title of the paper is adapted from ‘Resilience and Wellbeing: Resources for the Legal Profession’, available at  www.qls.com.au/For_the_profession/Love_Law_Live_Life. See also in the UK Jonathan Rayner, ‘Staff Wellbeing: Fit For Purpose?’ Law Society Gazette, 2 September 2013. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference ‘Women and Change in Higher Education: Culture and Careers’, Durham University, UK, 1–2 April 2014. I would like to thank Kathryn Hollingsworth and Maggie O'Neill for discussion and comments on themes in this paper, and the Society of Legal Scholars and Institute for Social Renewal, Newcastle University, for funding an ongoing project on wellbeing in the legal profession. All websites accessed August 2014.
Pages 202-230 | Published online: 07 May 2015

  • Ann Oakley, ‘Foreword’ in Alison Brooks and Ann Mackinnon (eds), Gender and the Restructured University (SRHE/Open University Press, 2001) xii.
  • Andrew Francis, ‘Legal Ethics, the Marketplace and the Fragmentation of Legal Professionalism’ (2005) 12(2) International Journal of the Legal Profession 173, 173.
  • This is a vast body of scholarship. For an introduction and overview, see eg Stuart Hall, Doreen Massey and Michael Rustin (eds), After Neoliberalism: The Kilburn Manifesto (Lawrence and Wishart, 2013), www.lwbooks.co.uk/journals/soundings/manifesto.html; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2007); Alfredo Saad-Filho and Daniel Johnston, Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader (Pluto, 2004); Noam Chomsky, Proft over People: Neoliberalism and the Global Order (Seven Stories, 1998); Manfred B Steger and Ravi K Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2010); Henry A Giroux, ‘The Terror of Neoliberalism: Rethinking the Signifcance of Cultural Politics' (2005) 32(1) College Literature 1; Henry A Giroux, Against the Terror of Neo-Liberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (Paradigm, 2008); Henry A Giroux, The Terror of Neo-Liberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy (Paradigm, 2004). Recurring themes in this work include the privatisation of the public sphere and (in the UK context) the dismantling of the welfare state; the commercialisation and commodification of diverse aspects of everyday life; the privatising and militarising of public space; and, the concern of this article, the corporatisation of higher education.
  • On law see Margaret Thornton, Privatizing the Public University: The Case of Law (GlassHouse Press, 2012). For a favour of this work more generally in the UK context, see Andrew McGettigan, The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education (Pluto, 2013); Roger Brown and Helen Carasso, Everything for Sale? The Marketization of UK Higher Education (Routledge/SHRE 2013); Stefan Collini, What Are Universities For? (Penguin, 2012). Note also Dave Hill and Ravi Kumar (eds), Global Neoliberalism and Education and its Consequences (Taylor and Francis, 2009); CC Morphew and PD Eckel (eds), Privatizing the Public University: Perspectives from Across the Academy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Marcia Texler Segal, Vasilikie Demos and Catherine White Berheide (eds), Gender Transformation in the Academy (Emerald, 2014); Jan Currie, Bev Thiele and Patricia Harris, Gendered Universities in Globalized Economies: Power, Careers and Sacrifces (Maryland, 2002): Jan Currie and J Newson (eds), Universities and Globalization (Sage, 1998); Brooks and Mackinnon (n 1); Val Gillies and Helen Lucey (eds), Power, Knowledge and the Academy: The Institutional is Political (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Sheila Slaughter and Larry Leslie, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997): Simon Cooper, John Hinkson and Geoff Sharp (eds), Scholars and Entrepreneurs: The Universities in Crisis (Arena, 1992); Simon Marginson and Mark Considine, The Enterprise University: Power, Governance and Reinvention in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 2000).
  • Thornton, ibid, 2 (emphasis omitted).
  • eg Fiona Cownie, Legal Academics: Culture and Identities (Hart Publishing, 2004); Anthony Bradney, Conversations, Choices and Chances: The Liberal Law School in the Twenty-First Century (Hart Publishing, 2003); WL Twining, Blackstone's Tower: The English Law School (Sweet and Maxwell, 1994); WL Twining, Law in Context: Enlarging a Discipline (Clarendon Press, 1997); Richard Collier, ‘The Liberal Law School, The Restructured University and the Paradox of Socio-Legal Studies' (2005) 68(3) Modern Law Review 475; Anthony Bradney and Fiona Cownie, ‘Transformative Visions of Legal Education’ (1998) 25 Journal of Law and Society 1; Peter Birks (ed), Pressing Problems in the Law: What Are Law Schools For? (Oxford University Press, 1996).
  • See Phil Thomas, ‘Socio-Legal Studies: The Case of Disappearing Fleas and Bustards' in P Thomas (ed), Socio-Legal Studies (Cavendish Publishing, 1997); Paddy Hillyard, ‘Invoking Indignation: Refection on Future Directions of Socio-Legal Studies' (2002) 29(4) Journal of Law and Society 645; Alan Hunt, ‘Governing the Socio-Legal Project: Or, What Do Research Councils Do?’ (1994) 21 Journal of Law and Society 522. These debates have had particular resonance in the related field of criminology: Paddy Hillyard et al, ‘Leaving a “Stain upon the Silence”: Contemporary Criminology and the Politics of Dissent’ (2004) 44 British Journal of Criminology 369; Roger Walters, ‘New Modes of Governance and the Commodification of Criminological Knowledge’ (2003) 12(1) Social and Legal Studies 5.
  • A contrast can be made, for example, with the readings of Bradney and Cownie (n 6) and Thornton (n 4); see further Margaret Thornton, ‘The Demise of Diversity in Legal Education: Globalisation and the New Knowledge Economy’ (2001) 8(1) International Journal of the Legal Profession 37; Margaret Thornton, ‘Among the Ruins: Law in the Neo-Liberal Academy’ (2001) 20 Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 3; Margaret Thornton, ‘Technocentrism and the Law School’ (1998) 36(2) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 369; Margaret Thornton, ‘Gothic Horror in the Legal Academy’ (2005) 14 Social and Legal Studies 267.
  • See further discussion in Cownie (n 6) and Thornton (n 4). In drawing on work from different countries, what follows, in focusing on England and Wales primarily, does not seek to mask differences in practice between law schools, which are of course diverse and must be approached within the context of specific educational/legal systems and cultures.
  • Joan Acker, ‘Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organization’ (1990) 4(2) Gender and Society 139.
  • See further discussion in Donald Nicolson and Julian Webb, ‘Public Rules and Private Values: Fractured Profession(alism)s and Institutional Ethics' (2005) 12(2) International Journal of the Legal Profession 165.
  • For an excellent overview of these interconnections and this research base, see Hilary Sommerlad, Lisa Webley, Liz Duff, Daniel Muzio and Jennifer Tomlinson, Diversity in the Legal Profession in England and Wales: A Qualitative Study of Barriers and Individual Choices (Legal Services Board/University of Westminster, 2010).
  • See eg Well-Being and the Practice of Law, www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/wellbeinglawsyllabusbowling2012.pdf; Margaret Thornton, ‘Inhabiting the Neoliberal University’ (2013) 38(2) Alternative Law Journal 72, www.altlj.org/news-and-views/opinion/543-inhabiting-the-neoliberal-university.
  • See eg discussion in John Flood, ‘Megalawyering in the Global Order: The Cultural, Social and Economic Transformation of Global Legal Practice’ (1996) 3 International Journal of the Legal Profession 169; Andrew Boon, John Flood and Julian Webb, ‘Postmodern Profession: The Fragmentation of Legal Education’ (2005) 32(3) Journal of Law and Society 473. The extent to which these shifts are redrawing ideas of legal ‘professionalism’ is considered below.
  • Recently, and notably, in relation to the Legal Education and Training Review: Setting Standards—The Future of Legal Services Education and Training Regulation in England and Wales (2013).
  • Nicholas Coxon, ‘Seeking the Brighter Side of Pessimism: Mental Wellbeing in the Law’ [2012] Young Lawyers Journal 18, www.liv.asn.au.
  • See generally, for example, Cabinet Office: Reports and Publications relating to the National Wellbeing Programme, https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-wellbeing; NHS Wellbeing Self Assessment, www.nhs.uk/Tools/Pages/Wellbeing-self-assessment.aspx; Office for National Statistics, Measuring National Wellbeing, www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/well-being/index.html.
  • eg MIND, www.mind.org.uk; Anxiety UK, www.anxietyuk.org.uk; Time to Change, www.time-to-change.org. uk, each of which, while addressing general and specific mental health issues, engages in discussion of how positive wellbeing might be promoted.
  • Carol Smart, Personal Life (Polity, 2007).
  • See Rayner (n *). This ‘wellbeing turn’ in law, for example, may itself be positioned as terms of the ‘business case for equality’ model in ways that side-step questions about legal cultures and values: see further below. In relation to depression, meanwhile, note Allan V Horwitz and Jerome C Wakefield, The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder (Oxford University Press, 2007).
  • There have, for example, been various organisational attempts recently in the profession and in specific law firms to promote wellbeing and mental/physical health awareness amongst lawyers; to reconsider at both national and local levels the nature of legal working cultures and conditions; and to encourage greater support for those staff who do face difficulties. Of particular note in the UK is the charity LawCare, ‘an advisory and support service designed to help lawyers, their immediate families and their staff to deal with issues such as stress, depression, addiction, eating disorders and related emotional difficulties (www.lawcare.org.uk). Several firms (such as Herbert Smith Freehills, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Hill Dickinson and Shoosmiths) have recently established dedicated wellbeing programmes for staff: see further Rayner (n *). In 2013 the Law Society sought to appoint a Policy Officer with specific responsibility for Social Mobility and Wellbeing: www.lawsociety.org.uk/careers/law-society-vacancies/policy-officer-social-mobility-wellbeing-091213; see further Jessica Pryce-Jones, ‘Impact of Wellbeing on Performance’ Law Society Gazette, 18 February 2013; Gerry Kearns, ‘Ensuring Staff Wellbeing is a Commercial Necessity’ Law Society Gazette, 9 September 2013; Legal Futures, ‘Stress Pushing Lawyers towards Clinical Depression and Other Mental Health Issues', www.legalfutures.co.uk/latest-news/stress-pushing-lawyers-towards-clinical-depression-mental-illnesses-says-survey; Lawyers Defence Group: www.lawyersdefencegroup.org.uk/depression-the-hidden-hazard-2; Wellness Network for Law, http://wellnessforlaw.com. Note also the QUT Wellness for Law Forum 2014, papers available at http://wellnessforlaw.com/2014/03/2014-forum-materials.
  • Research suggests that wellbeing is a serious issue affecting the contemporary legal profession. Health issues associated with poor wellbeing in the law, particularly in relation to depression, anxiety and stress, are the subject of numerous research reports: see below and, in the UK, Health and Wellbeing: The Law Society's PC Holder Survey 2012 (Law Society, 2012); Lawcare, Initial Results of Lawcare's Stress in the Legal Profession Survey, www.lawscot.org.uk/media/534264/microsoft%20word%20-%20initial%20results%20of%20lawcare's%20stress%20in%20the%20legal%20profession%20survey.pdf; see generally, for context, Pascoe Pleasance, Nigel Balmer and Richard Moorhead, A Time for Change: Solicitors' Firms in England and Wales (Law Society, Legal Services Board, Ministry of Justice, 2012).
  • eg Martin EP Seligman, Paul R Verkuil and Terry Kang, ‘Why Lawyers Are Unhappy’ (2005) 10(1) Deakin Law Review 49; Nancy Levit and Douglas O Linder, The Happy Lawyer: Making a Good Life in the Law (Oxford University Press, 2010); John Hagan and Fiona Kay, ‘Even Lawyers Get the Blues: Gender, Depression, and Job Satisfaction in Legal Practice’ (2007) 41 Law & Society Review 51; Patrick Schiltz, ‘On Being a Happy, Healthy, and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unethical Profession’ (1999) 52 Vanderbilt Law Review 871; Will Hardy, The Unhappy Lawyers (2008), http://willhardy.com.au/legal-essays/unhappy-lawyers/detail; Sharon Medlow, Norm Kelk and Ian Hickie, ‘Depression and the Law: Experiences of Australian Barristers and Solicitors' (2011) 33 Sydney Law Review 771; Terry Harrell, ‘Depression and the Legal Profession’ (2001) 23(4) Indiana Trial Lawyers Association Quarterly Journal, www.in.gov/judiciary/ijlap/2340.htm; Sofa Lind, ‘Stress and the City: The Charity On Call for Struggling Legal Professionals' Legal Week, September 2011, www.legalweek.com/legalweek/analysis/2107223/stress-city-charity-struggling-legal-professionals; Melanie Naylor, ‘Depression in Lawyers' (2004) 31(9) Brief 12; Julie Lewis, ‘Parents Speak Out about the Law and Depression’ (2007) 45(7) Law Society Journal 24.
  • For example, studies such as Stephen Shanfield, G Andrew, H Benjamin et al, ‘Psychiatric Distress in Law Students' (1985) 35 Journal of Legal Education 65; G Andrew et al, ‘The Role of Legal Education in Producing Psychological Distress among Law Students and Lawyers' (1996) 11 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 225; Connie JA Beck, B Sales and GAH Benjamin, ‘Lawyer Distress: Alcohol Related Problems and Other Concerns among a Sample of Practising Lawyers' [1996] Journal of Law and Health 1; GA Benjamin, E Darling and B Sales, ‘The Prevalence of Depression, Alcohol Abuse and Cocaine Abuse among United States Lawyers' (1990) 13 International Journal of Law and Psychology 233. For an excellent discussion of these issues, see further Paula Baron, ‘A Dangerous Cult: Response to “The Effect of the Market on Legal Education”’ (2013) 23(2) Legal Education Review 273.
  • In addition to work cited above, and for a general overview of this research base, see Norm Kelk, Georgina Luscombe, Sharon Medlow and Ian Hickie, Courting the Blues: Attitudes towards Depression in Australian Law Students and Lawyers (Brain and Mind Research Institute/University of Sydney, 2009). Although see, for a rather different view, questioning both the methodological basis of many of these studies and the political ends to which this wellbeing agenda is then being put, Christine Parker, ‘Ethical Wellbeing in the Legal Profession: Let's Make the Personal Politics', paper presented at the RCSL Legal profession Group Meeting, Frauenchiemsee, Germany, 6–9 July 2014.
  • See work cited at n 24.
  • It has been argued, for example, that lawyer wellbeing may itself be improved by changes in the way the academy teaches the LLB; ‘such changes would involve a shift from the adversarial individualistic doctrinal focus of the traditional law degree, to embracing appropriate dispute resolution, students' emotional intelligence and resilience, and the “soft” skills called for in the “real” world of work’: Kate Galloway and Peter Jones, ‘Guarding our Identities: The Dilemma of Transformation in the Legal Academy’ (2014) 14(1) QUT Law Review 15. See further, for example, Molly Townes O'Brien, ‘Connecting Law Student Wellbeing to Social Justice, Problem Solving and Human Emotions' (2014) 14(1) QUT Law Review 52, highlighting law student perceptions that law school made them more rational, objectifying, analytical, logical, isolated, insecure and intolerant; WaitroseLaw Blog, ‘Does the Way that Lawyers are Encouraged to Think and Work Make them Vulnerable to Depression?’, www.legalcheek.com/2013/09/does-the-way-that-lawyers-are-encouraged-to-think-and-work-make-them-vulnerable-to-depression, discussing the reported suicide of City lawyer David Latham; John Simpson, ‘Stressed Lawyer Took his Own Life over Fear of Blunder’ The Times, 13 September 2013; Colin G James, ‘Lawyers' Wellbeing and Professional Legal Education’ (2008) 42(1) The Law Teacher: The International Journal of Legal Education 85; Molly Townes O'Brien, Stephen Tang and Kath Hall, ‘Changing our Thinking: Empirical Research on Law Students' Well-Being: Thinking Styles and the Law Curriculum’ (2011) 21(2) Legal Education Review 149; Stephen Tang and Anneka Ferguson, ‘The Possibility of Wellbeing: Preliminary Results from Surveys of Australian Professional Legal Education Students' (2014) 14(1) QUT Law Review 27; Roger E Schechter, ‘Changing Law Schools to Make Less Nasty Lawyers' (1996) 10(2) Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 367; Kennon M Sheldon and Lawrence S Krieger, ‘Does Legal Education have Undermining Effects on Law Students? Evaluating Changes in Motivation, Values, and Well-Being’ (2004) 22 Behavioral Sciences and the Law 261; Massimiliano Tani and Prue Vines, ‘Law Students' Attitudes to Education: Pointers to Depression in the Legal Academy and the Profession?’ [2009] University of New South Wales Law Review 51; James JA Alfni and Joseph N Van Vooren, ‘Is there a Solution to the Problem of Lawyer Stress? The Law School Perspective’ [1995] Journal of Law and Health 61; Jennifer Jolly-Ryan, ‘Promoting Mental Health in Law School: What Law Schools Can Do for Law Students to Help them Become Happy, Mentally Healthy Lawyers' (2009) 48 University of Louisville Law Review 95.
  • See further Richard Susskind, Tomorrow's Lawyers: An Introduction to your Future (Oxford University Press, 2013); Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services (Oxford University Press, 2010). Cf Brian Z Tamahana, Failing Law Schools (University of Chicago Press, 2012).
  • Working Families and Addleshaw Goddard, Legal Lives: Retaining Talent through a Balanced Culture (2008).
  • See further discussion below. Note also, in different ways, themes within Scott Turow, One L: The Turbulent True Story of a Year at Harvard Law School (Grand Central, 1997); and, in a different context, Peter Goodrich, Reading the Law (Blackwell, 1986); Bradney (n 6).
  • I am grateful to Helen Rhoades for this point. See further work cited at n 27.
  • Rayner (n *).
  • Ibid. There has been an increasing focus on questions of mindfulness in law: see Joel Orenstein, ‘Mindfulness and the Law: A Different Approach to Sustainable and Effective Lawyering’ (2014) 14(1) QUT Law Review 106; Stephanie West Allan, ‘A Better You: Becoming a More Mindful Lawyer’, www.dbadocket.org/work-life-balance/a-better-you-becoming-a-mindful-lawyer/?sf22671065=1.
  • See eg Jane Lee, ‘Judge Tells of Depression Struggle in Bid to Help Many in Legal Circles' The Age, 14 September 2013: ‘I just thought [in a] typical Australian male situation: “Pull up your socks, kick yourself in the backside, you'll be right, don't tell anyone anything. It's a sign of weakness. Just battle through and you'll turn a corner”—which is nonsense. Your family can tell when there's something wrong’: http://m.theage.com.au/victoria/judge-tells-of-depression-struggle-in-bid-to-help-many-in-legal-circles-20130913–2tqci.html.
  • See further work cited at nn 22, n 23 and n 27; LawCare (n 21). Note also, for example, the Law Council of Australia's mental health and wellbeing portal, described as a ‘new initiative designed to provide a centralised source of information about mental health for the legal profession’. This highlights the range of resources and assistance services currently available and notes a range of other initiatives being undertaken in this area: www.lawcouncil.asn.au/lawcouncil/index.php/12-resources/240-mental-health-and-wellbeing-in-the-legal-profession; ‘Wellbeing and the Law Foundation’, www.watlfoundation.org.au/default.aspx.
  • Taking the form, for example, of dedicated ‘Stress Awareness Weeks', staff development and management workshops on stress and mental health awareness, ‘mindfulness' taster sessions and a range of workplace health related initiatives. For a rather different reading see Fiona Cownie, ‘Two Jobs, Two Lives and a Funeral: Legal Academics and Work-Life Balance’ (2004) 5 Web Journal of Current Legal Issues, http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/2004/issue5/cownie5.html. At the time of writing the Guardian newspaper has recently conducted an online survey on the issue, following a succession of articles and blog posts published on The Guardian Higher Education Network: ‘While anecdotal accounts multiply, mental-health issues in academia are little researched and hard data is thin on the ground’: http://survey.confirmit.com/wix0/p3068868030.aspx. See further Claire Shaw, ‘Overworked and Isolated: Work Pressure Fuels Mental Illness in Academia’ The Guardian, 8 May 2014, www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/work-pressure-fuels-academic-mental-illness-guardian-study-health; Kim Thomas, ‘We Don't Want Anyone to Know say Depressed Academics' Guardian Professional, 8 May 2014, www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/08/academics-mental-health-suffering-silence-guardian-survey; Matthew Taylor, ‘Getting Engaged’ (2013) 4 RSA Journal 16.
  • See further work cited at n 3.
  • Harvey (n 3).
  • Smart (n 19). See further Patricia Ventura, Neoliberal Culture: Living with American Neoliberalism (Ashgate, 2012); Jean Comaroff and John L Comaroff, Millennial Capitalism and the Culture of Neoliberalism (Duke University Press, 2001); Christina Scharff, ‘Gender and Neoliberalism: Exploring the Exclusions and Contours of Neoliberal Subjectivities', http://theoryculturesociety.org/christina-scharff-on-gender-and-neoliberalism.
  • See work cited at nn 4 and 8.
  • Thornton, ‘Inhabiting’ (n 13).
  • Cownie (n 6).
  • For example, in the UK context see Celia Wells, ‘Working Out Women In Law Schools' (2001) 21(1) Legal Studies 116; Fiona Cownie, ‘Women Legal Academics: A New Research Agenda?’ (1998) 25(1) Journal of Law and Society 102.
  • See further Sommerlad et al (n 12).
  • For discussion of values in the context of equality and diversity debates see Lisa Webley and Liz Duff, ‘Women Solicitors as a Barometer for Problems in the Legal Profession—Time to Put Values before Profts?’ (2007) 34(3) Journal of Law and Society 374. On affect, see Carolyn Pedwell and Ann Whitehead, ‘Affecting Feminism: Questions of Affect and Feeling in Feminist Theory’ (2012) 13(2) Feminist Theory 115.
  • Thornton (n 4); Mark Olssen and Michael A Peters, ‘Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism’ (2005) 20(3) Journal of Education Policy 313.
  • See eg Cownie (n 6).
  • This is not, of course, to say that these processes impact on all law schools in the same way. Indeed, much of this debate and literature has tended to focus on ‘elite’ institutions such as, in the UK, Russell Group research intensive schools (at least as traditionally understood). See further below on how new configurations of this hierarchy may now be emerging. At the same time it is important not to generalise across jurisdictions, and between, for example, US and Australian research cited above and the UK context.
  • Mary Heath and Peter D Burdon, ‘Academic Resistance to the Neoliberal University’ (2013) 23(2) Legal Education Review 379.
  • Note, for example, the UK Campaign for the Public University, http://publicuniversity.org.uk; Alistair Bonnett, ‘Something New in Freedom’, Times Higher Education, 23 May 2013, www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/something-new-in-freedom/2003930.article.
  • JH Newman, The Idea of a University (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).
  • Bill Readings, The University in Ruins (Harvard University Press, 1996).
  • AH Halsey, The Decline of Donnish Dominion: The British Academic Professions in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 1995).
  • See work cited at n 4.
  • See work cited at n 5.
  • eg Bradney (n 6) 2003, esp ch 2, ‘Holistic Education: What is a Liberal Education?’.
  • See work cited at n 4. See also Baron (n 24); Ruth Barcan, ‘Why Do Some Academics Feel Like Frauds?’ Times Higher Education, 9 January 2014, who locates shifts in personal experience in the academy, and the ethical dimensions of academic labour and an ‘exploited vocationalism’, in the context of the university as a ‘hybrid’ organisation: simultaneously a scholarly community, bureaucracy and pseudo-corporation. See also themes in Andrew Sparkes, ‘Embodiment, Academics and the Audit Culture: A Story Seeking Consideration’ (2007) 7(4) Qualitative Research 521; Lee David Parker, ‘University Corporatization: Driving Redefinition’ (2011) 22(4) Critical Perspectives on Accounting 434; Luke Martell, ‘The Marketization of our Universities: Economic Criteria Get Precedence over What's Good in Human Terms', http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-marketisation-of-our-universities.
  • Richard Collier, ‘Privatizing the University and the New Political Economy of Socio-Legal Studies: Remaking the (Legal) Academic Subject’ 2013 40(3) Journal of Law and Society 450.
  • Thornton (n 4) 110–15.
  • Benjamin Ginsbery, The Fall of the Faculty and the Rise of the All-Administrative University (Oxford University Press, 2011).
  • Thornton (n 4) 131–5. This is seen as part of a step-change in how academics increasingly appear, building on Halsey's (n 53) depiction of the ‘proletarianisation’ of academic labour, members of a new ‘managed class' within universities (Thornton (n 4) 132–3) as collegiality gives way to top-down managerialism and as middle-managers become caught in the double-bind of instituting such change whilst, ultimately, having little control over their content and direction.
  • Thornton (n 4) 124–31.
  • Martin Parker and David Jary, ‘The McUniversity: Organization, Management and Academic Subjectivity’ (1995) 2(2) Organization 319.
  • Deborah Lupton, Blog: The Academic Quantified Self, http://simplysociology.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/the-academic-Quantified-self; Barcan (n 57).
  • Thornton (n 4) provides specific examples drawn from empirical research suggesting the increasing margin-alisation within some law schools of space to engage in critical social science scholarship, a process exacerbated by managerial ‘top-down’ imperatives in relation to research quality, audit assessment and internal promotion and appointment processes. Thus, it is argued, growing numbers of individuals are being encouraged (and in some cases instructed) to refocus their publications on a narrow range of ‘gold standard’ highly ranked gener-alist journals at the expense of the ‘outlier’, the specialist and the esoteric outlet, notwithstanding statements of both RAE and REF panels in the UK that subject panels ‘assess all forms of output on an equal basis, with no preconception of quality attached to the form or medium of an output. No sub-panel will use journal impact factors or any hierarchy of journals in their assessment of outputs' (REF Panel Criteria and Working Methods (HEFCE, 2012) section C2, para 38). See further Kathy Bowrey, ‘Audit Culture: Why Law Journals are Ranked and What Impact this Has on the Discipline of Law Today’ (2007) 17(1) Legal Education Review 291.
  • Different cultures, for example, have different experiences of what the West labels ‘depression’: see further Clark Lawlor, From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression (Oxford University Press, 2012); Alain Ehrenberg, The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age (Queens University Press, 2009); Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon (Vintage, 2002).
  • See Parker (n 25), questioning this evidence base in relation to law schools. On links between economy and emotional life more generally, see the work of Oliver James, eg Affuenza (Vermillion, 2007).
  • eg Bradney (n 6) esp ch 2, ‘Holistic Education: What is a Liberal Education?’; see also Cownie (n 6).
  • Whereby privatising imperatives are seen as components of budget defcit reduction and austerity politics.
  • Anthony Bradney, ‘Austerity Politics, Neo-Liberalism and English University Law Schools', paper presented at the Research Committee of the Sociology of Law Meeting, Toulouse, France, 3–6 September 2013.
  • Thus, as Thornton notes in her critique of neoliberalism and legal education, ‘Despite the general decline in morale arising from the market embrace, the overwhelming preponderance of legal academics interviewed felt privileged to be part of the academy. This is the paradox of academic life. A passion for academic ideas—a belief in the freedom to think, to pursue interesting lines of inquiry, to write, to engage with and infuence future lawyers—and to change the world—compelled them to remain... many loved the facets of academic life associated with the traditional idea of the university—teaching and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake’: Thornton (n 4) 218. Present political attitudes can themselves be seen as refecting, to degrees, the inherent as well as the utilitarian value of higher education: David Willetts, Robbins Revisited: Bigger and Better Higher Education (Social Market Foundation, 2013) ch 2 ‘The Report and the Value of Learning’.
  • Thornton (n 4) xiv.
  • Ibid, 207.
  • Richard Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (WW Norton, 1999); Richard Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2007).
  • Locating this debate within broader perspectives both nationally and globally suggests that the processes of privatisation, audit and concerns about de-professionalisation are ubiquitous and long-standing, with work at all levels within neoliberal economies characterised by lack of conceptual clarity, heightened insecurity and growing inequality and division. See further Charles Derber, ‘The Proletarianization of the Professional: A Review Essay’ in C Derber (ed), Professionals as Workers: Mental Labor in Advanced Capitalism (GK Hall, 1982).
  • See eg EP Thompson, Warwick University Ltd: Industry, Management and the Universities (Penguin, 1970); EP Thompson, ‘The Business University’ New Society, 19 February 1970.
  • AH Halsey and MA Trow, The British Academics (Harvard University Press, 1971).
  • Wells (n 43). Although, as Wells observed 30 years later, ‘Readers of [Legal Studies]... most likely are male, pale, middle-class and able-bodied. True, there is more chance that they are female than there would have been 20 years ago, but those women will almost invariably be ft and white.’ Ibid, 116.
  • See further Margaret Thornton, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity and the Academy’ (1989) 17 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 115; Richard Collier, ‘Masculinism, Law and Law Teaching’ (1991) 19 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 427.
  • Roger Burrows, ‘Living with the H-Index: Metric Assemblages in the Contemporary Academy’ (2012) 60(2) Sociological Review 355, 358; Elaine Showalter, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents (Oxford University Press, 2005).
  • Contrast Michael Burrage, ‘From a Gentleman's to a Public Profession: Status and Politics in the History of English Solicitors' (1996) 3 International Journal of the Legal Profession 45, 49.
  • Bradney (n 6).
  • A process underscored by a complex configuration of demographic, economic, cultural and technological changes, although, as is well-documented, this gender transformation at point of entry to law schools and the legal professions has not been matched by access to senior levels. See further Sommerlad et al (n 12); Webley and Duff (n 45); Sharon Bolton and Daniel Muzio, ‘The Paradoxical Processes of Feminization in the Professions: The Case of Established, Aspiring and Semi-Professions' (2008) 22(2) Work, Employment and Society 281; Hilary Sommerlad, ‘The Myth of Feminization: Women and Cultural Change in the Legal Profession’ (1996) 1(1) International Journal of the Legal Profession 31.
  • There is, Oakley suggests in the context of the restructured university, something attractive to the marginalised about cultures that stress the need for open procedures and that question potentially ineffcient and unfair concepts as tenure: ‘But when the culture of bureaucracy and commodification is combined with a disregard—fagrant in its explicitness—for the way power operates, the result is bound to be discriminatory’: Oakley (n 1) xiii (emphasis added).
  • See further discussion in Sommerlad et al (n 12); Donald Nicolson, ‘Demography, Discrimination and Diversity: A New Dawn for the British Legal Profession?’ (2005) 12(2) International Journal of the Legal Profession 201. These developments, judged against a range of indicators, reveal a strong commitment within the legal academy to gender equality, an issue embedded, for example, in aspects of the 2014 REF process.
  • Cownie (n 6).
  • Bradney (n 6).
  • Note, for example, the ‘JurPro’ project on women professors in jurisprudence funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the European Social Fund (ESF): www.fernuni-hagen.de/jurpro.
  • Including work cited at nn 4 and 8.
  • Eli Wald, ‘Glass Ceilings and Dead Ends: Professional Ideologies, Gender Stereotypes and the Future of Women Lawyers at Large Law Firms' (2010) 78 Fordham Law Review 101. Note, for example, themes in Miriam David and Diana Woodward (eds), Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: Careers of Senior Women in the Academic World (Falmer Press, 1998); Ann Brooks, Academic Women (SRHE and Open University Press, 1997); Danusia Malina and Sian Maslin-Prothero (eds), Surviving the Academy: Feminist Perspectives (Falmer Press, 1998); Louise Morley and Val Walsh (eds), Breaking Boundaries: Women in Higher Education (Taylor and Francis, 1996); Louise Morley, Organising Feminisms: The Micro Politics of the Academy (Macmillan, 1999); J West and K Lyon, ‘The Trouble with Equal Opportunities: The Case of Women Academics' (1995) 7 Gender and Education 51.
  • Burrows (n 80).
  • This is not to argue that metrics are themselves inherently problematic. It is, rather, to ground them within the political-economic and ideological context of neoliberalism discussed above. On this theme see further the work of Thornton (n 8).
  • Thornton (n 4) 179. See also Peter Roberts, ‘Neoliberalism, Performativity and Research’ (2007) 53 Review of Education 349; Paula Baron, ‘Thriving in the Legal Academy’ (2007) 17(1) Legal Education Review 27.
  • An idea which echoes the more familiar notion of the law firm as a ‘greedy’ organisation: Susan Long, The Perverse Organisation and its Deadly Sins (Karnac Books, 2008).
  • Burrows (n 80).
  • Ibid, 368.
  • Ibid.
  • Lupton (n 64).
  • Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford University Press, 1978).
  • Erica McWilliam, ‘Changing the Academic Subject’ in R Hunter and M Keys (eds), Changing Law: Rights, Regulation, Reconciliation (Ashgate, 2005); Craig Prichard, ‘Embodied Knowing, Knowledge Management and the Reconstruction of Post-Compulsory Education: A Case of “Find a (Knowledge) Market, Suck It, Satisfy It and Move On?”’, www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ejrot/cmsconference/1999/documents/Information%20Knowledge/cms%20km%20paper%20webversion.pdf; Craig Prichard, ‘The Body Topographies of Education Management’ in J Hassard, R Holliday and H Willmott (eds), Body and Organization (Sage, 2000); C Casey, ‘Corporate Transformation: Designer Culture, Designer Employees and “Post-Occupational Solidarity“’ (1996) 3(3) Organization 317; C Casey ‘“Come, Join our Family”: Discipline and Integration in Corporate Organizational Culture’ (1999) 52(2) Human Relations 155.
  • Thornton, ‘Among the Ruins' (n 8) 2001: on the issue of resistance to managerialism and neoliberalism within law schools note Mary Heath and Peter Burdon, ‘Academic Resistance to the Neoliberal University’ (2013) 23(2) Legal Education Review 379; Jessica Guth and Chris Ashford, ‘The Legal Education and Training Review: Regulating Socio-Legal and Liberal Education?’ (2014) 48 Law Teacher 5. See also Clare Polster and J Newson, ‘Don't Count your Blessings: The Social Accomplishments of Performance Indicators' in Currie and Newson (n 8).
  • Burrows (n 80) (references omitted). In a similar manner, Thornton observes that ‘[t]he criteria are constantly changing, not only because of political change, but because of the propensity of the subjects of audit—universities in this case—to manipulate whatever criteria are in vogue. Academics are therefore perennially beset with uncertainty and insecurity arising from the need to reinvent the self. The instability of the criteria also precludes long-term monitoring of the auditing process... In gearing up for a research assessment exercise, the norms of academic life are invariably subverted’: Thornton (n 4) 186–8; see also Lupton (n 5) 5.
  • See eg Bradney (n 6).
  • In addition to work cited above at n 36, see Baron (n 24); Diane Reay, ‘From Academic Freedom to Academic Capitalism’, www.discoversociety.org/2014/02/15/on-the-frontline-from-academic-freedom-to-academic-capitalism; Priyamvada Gopal, ‘Viewpoint: The Assault on Higher Education and Democracy’, www.discoversociety.org/2014/02/15/viewpoint-the-assault-on-higher-education-and-democracy; ‘SLOW University’ conference, St Aidan's College, Durham University, UK, March 2014, https://www.dur.ac.uk/whatson/event/?eventno=19198. This is a ‘state of play’ in which social practice is seen as shaped within a wider culture of risk-management and perpetual vigilance against risks associated with the marketplace and new metrics; for example, the potential student complaint, the falling league table ranking, the comparatively poor level of external funding and so forth can each represent threats to be guarded against, states of existence to be overcome. Falling below the ‘internationally excellent’ can itself potentially be deemed a failure that needs, at the experiential level, to be managed and dealt with institutionally and personally; see Collier (n 58); Thornton (n 4) 179; Rosalind Gill, ‘Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Injuries of the Neoliberal University’ in R Flood and R Gill (eds), Secrecy and Silence in the Research Process: Feminist Refections (Routledge, 2009); Sparkes (n 57); Nadine Muller, ‘An Anxious Mind’, www.nadinemuller.org.uk/musings/an-anxious-mind; Anonymous Academic, ‘There is a Culture of Acceptance around Mental Health Issues in Academia’ Guardian Higher Education Network, www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/mar/01/mental-health-issue-phd-research-university.
  • Margaret Thornton, ‘The Mirage of Merit: Reconstituting the “Ideal Academic”’ (2013) 28(76) Australian Feminist Studies 127; Thornton, ‘Inhabiting’ (n 13); Margaret Thornton, ‘The Mystique of Merit: Gender in the Neoliberal Legal Academy’, paper presented at ‘More Gender than Justice? Gender and Careers in the (Legal) Academy’, Hagen, Germany, 13 June 2013 (copy on fle with author); Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Minorities, Merit and Misrecognition in the Globalized Profession’ (2010) 80 Fordham Law Review 2481.
  • Erika Rackley, ‘Rethinking Judicial Diversity’ in Ulrike Schultz and Gisela Shaw (eds), Gender and Judging (Hart Publishing, 2013): Erika Rackley, Women, Judging and the Judiciary: From Difference to Diversity (Routledge, 2013).
  • Martha Fineman, The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family and other Twentieth Century Tragedies (Routledge, 1995). Thornton observes, for example, that the social assumption that women are the primary carers does not ft easily ‘with the conventional image of the autonomous worker, which remains a masculinist construct... Academic fathers, like male corporate lawyers, tend to have partners who either are not in employment or work part-time, while academic mothers are expected to take primary responsibility for children, as well as sick and aged relatives. It is therefore somewhat ironic that just as the proportion of women in the academy has well and truly satisfed the requirements of a critical mass and challenged the stereotype, corporatisation has masked a masculinist backlash’ (Thornton (n 4) 152, references omitted). See further K Gerson, No Man's Land: Changing Commitments to Family and Work (Basic Books, 1994); on male lawyers and fatherhood in the legal profession see Richard Collier, Men, Law and Gender: Essays on the ‘Man’ of Law (Routledge, 2010) ch 5.
  • Thornton (n 4) 158.
  • Deborah Kerfoot and David Knights, ‘The Best is Yet to Come? The Quest for Embodiment in Managerial Work’ in David Collinson and Jeff Hearn (eds), Men as Managers, Managers as Men: Critical Perspectives on Men, Masculinities and Management (Sage, 1996). See also Deborah Kerfoot and Stephen Whitehead, ‘”Boys Own” Stuff: Masculinity and the Management of Further Education’ [1998] Sociological Review 436; Stephen Whitehead, ‘Men, Managers and the Shifting Discourses of Post-Compulsory Education’ (1996) 1(2) Research in Post-Compulsory Education 151. Thornton (n 4) notes how this process that can itself have gendered dimensions whereby, for example, ‘top-down managerialism encourages the appointment of “yes-men” who are prepared to do the bidding of management’ (128), underscored by ‘a much cruder Realpolitik within the university such as “a battle of male egos and who is boss and who isn't“’ (120).
  • Kerfoot and Knights (n 109). See further Jeff Hearn, ‘Men, Managers and Management: The Case of Higher Education’ in Stephen Whitehead and Ron Moodley (eds), Transforming Managers: Engendering Change in the Public Sector (Routledge, 1999); Jeff Hearn, ‘Academia, Management and Men: Making the Connections' in Brooks and Mackinnon (n 1); Craig Pritchard, ‘Managing Universities: Is It Men's Work?’ in Collinson and Hearn (n 109).
  • Thornton (n 4) 156. ‘Ironically if women act like men and pursue the aggressive and competitive model of managerialism that corporatisation demands of them, unfattering epithets, such as the “phallic female” may be used to denigrate them’. Cf Collier (n 107) ch 6.
  • Kerfoot and Knights (n 109).
  • Thornton (n 4) 156. See also Sharon R Bird, ‘“Unsettling Universities”: Incongruous, Gendered Business Structures: A Case Study Approach’ (2011) 18 Gender, Work and Organisation 202; A Witz, Susan Halford and Mike Savage, ‘Organized Bodies: Gender, Sexuality and Embodiment in Contemporary Organizations' in Lisa Atkins and Vicki Merchant (eds), Sexualising the Social: Power and the Organization of Sexuality (Macmillan, 1996) 175, cited in Brooks (n 90) 36; David Knights and W Richards, ‘Sex Discrimination in UK Academia’ (2003) 10(2) Gender, Work and Organisation 213; Celia Davies and Penny Holloway, ‘Troubling Transformations: Gender Regimes and Organizational Culture in the Academy’ in Morley and Walsh (n 90); Y Benschop and M Brouns, ‘Crumbling Ivory Towers: Academic Organising and its Gender Effects' (2003) 10(2) Gender, Work and Organisation 194.
  • Thornton (n 4) 156.
  • See eg Margaret Thornton, ‘Authority and Corporeality: The Conundrum for Women in Law’ (1988) 6 Feminist Legal Studies 147.
  • The research of Sommerlad et al (n 12) draws attention to the ‘legacy of the profession's white, male elitist origins' and the continued ‘signifcance of cultural stereotypes' (at 6). In this shifting cultural context there is also reason to think that changes in higher education are recalibrating the relationship between female staff and male students in problematic ways. See further Alison Phipps and Isabel Young, That's What She Said: Women Students' Experiences of ‘Lad Culture’ in Higher Education (University of Sussex, 2012); Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism (Simon and Schuster, 2014) ch 4, ‘Young Women Learning’; Sally Fieldman, ‘The Fight-back against Sexism on Campus' Times Higher Education, 24 July 2014, www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/comment/columnists/the-fghtback-against-sexism-on-campus/2014678.article.
  • Collier (n 107) ch 6.
  • See further Richard Collier, ‘“Nutty Professors“, “Men in Suits” and “New Entrepreneurs”: Corporeality, Subjectivity and Change in the Law School and Legal Practice’ (1998) 7(1) Social and Legal Studies 27.
  • RW Connell and James Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’ (2005) 19(6) Gender and Society 829. See also Penny Griffn, ‘Neoliberal Economic Discourses and Hegemonic Masculinity(ies): Masculine Hegemony (Dis)Embodied’, IPEG Papers in Global Political Economy No 19 (2005), www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&firm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CC0QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F% 2FError! Hyperlink reference not valid.rGcSShge8joDQAQ&usg=AFQjCNH44esQeKebTWt5Vpz_otYSEUgVtw&bvm=bv.58187178,d.bGQ. On the contradictory positioning of young women as paradigmatic neoliberal subjects, however, see Christina Scharff, Repudiating Feminism: Young Women in a Neoliberal World (Ashgate, 2012).
  • Connell and Messerschmidt (n 119). See further Fidelma Ashe, The New Politics of Masculinity: Men, Power and Resistance (Routledge, 2007) 150; RW Connell, The Men and the Boys (Polity, 2000); Jeff Hearn, Marina Blagojevi? and Katherine Harrison (eds), Rethinking Transnational Men: Beyond, Between and Within Nations (Routledge, 2013).
  • Richard Collier, ‘Rethinking Men and Masculinities in the Contemporary Legal Profession: The Example of Fatherhood, Transnational Business Masculinities, and Work-Life Balance in Large Law Firms' (2013) 13(2) Nevada Law Journal 410.
  • Paul du Gay, Production of Culture/Cultures of Production (Sage, 1998).
  • Francis (n 2).
  • Margaret Thornton, ‘Global Law Firms and Media Constructions of Hypermasculinity’, paper presented at International Legal Ethics Conference V, Banff, Canada, 12–14 July 2012 (copy on fle with author).
  • On the place of values in this global marketplace, see Christine Parker and Adrian Evans, Inside Lawyers' Ethics (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
  • Sommerlad et al (n 12).
  • See further discussion in Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation’ (2007) 34(2) Journal of Law and Society 190; Andrew Francis and Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Access to Legal Work Experience and its Role in the (Re)production of Legal Professional Identity’ (2009) 16(1) International Journal of the Legal Profession 63; Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Let History Judge? Gender, Race, Class and Performative Identity: A Study of Women Judges in England and Wales' in Ulrike Schultz and Gisela Shaw (eds), Gender and Judging (Hart Publishing, 2013).
  • On failure, inadequacy and tensions with the limitless potential of neoliberalism, see further Zygmunt Bauman, Life in Fragments (Blackwell 1995); Ventura (n 39).
  • Where the repeated mantra is that one can ‘be who you want to be’, that ‘aspiration’ to success in life can be achieved through success in law: Richard Collier, ‘”Be smart, be successful, be yourself... “? Representations of the Training Contract and Trainee Solicitor in Advertising by Large Law Firms' (2005) 12(1) International Journal of the Legal Profession 51; Margaret Thornton and Lucinda Shannon, ‘“Selling the Dream”: Law School Branding and the Illusion of Choice’ (2013) 23(2) Legal Education Review 249.
  • See Sommerlad, ‘Researching and Theorizing’ (n 127); Francis and Sommerlad (n 127); Sommerlad et al (n 12).
  • Ibid; see n 133 below.
  • On these representations see Collier (n 129); Thornton and Shannon (n 129). See further on gender discussion in Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Women Solicitors in a Fractured Profession: Intersections of Gender and Professionalism in England and Wales' (2002) 9(3) International Journal of the Legal Profession 213; Hilary Sommerlad, ‘The Gendering of the Professional Subject: Commitment, Choice and Social Closure in the Legal Profession’ in Clare McGlynn (ed), Legal Feminisms: Theory and Practice (Dartmouth, 1998).
  • Sharon Bolton and Daniel Muzio, ‘Can't Live with ‘em; Can't Live without ‘em: Gendered Segmentation in the Legal Profession’ (2007) 41(1) Sociology 47.
  • See eg Lord Neuberger, Rainbow Lecture on Diversity 2014, House of Commons, 12 March 2014, http://supremecourt.uk/docs/speech-140312.pdf; ‘Legal Lives' (n 29); Webley and Duff (n 45); Margaret Thornton and Joanne Bagust, ‘The Gender Trap: Flexible Work in Corporate Legal Practice’ (2007) 45(4) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 773. See further Liz Duff and Lisa Webley, Equality and Diversity: Women Solicitors Research Study 48, vol 2: Qualitative Findings and Literature Review (Law Society, 2004).
  • See further Juanita Elias, ‘Hegemonic Masculinities, the Multinational Corporation and the Developmental State: Constructing Gender in “Progressive” Firms' (2008) 10 Men and Masculinities 405; RW Connell and Julian Wood, ‘Globalization and Business Masculinities' (2005) 7(4) Men and Masculinities 347.
  • Although see further, and more generally, Lisa Pryor, The Pinstriped Prison: How Over Achievers Get Trapped in Corporate Jobs they Hate (Picador, 2008).
  • See n 4.
  • See n 4.
  • Such as BPP University College, www.bpp.com.
  • See The Student Academic Experience Survey 2013 (Which?, 2013), one reading of which suggests that present law staff contacts may not be sustainable as the nature of the law degree and student expectations change.
  • It is Thornton's argument that ‘law schools, too, [appear] magnetically drawn to the wealthy firms and their perceived needs in design of their curricula’: Thornton, ‘Demise of Diversity’ (n 8) 40.
  • McGettigan (n 4) ix.
  • Thornton (n 4) 135–44.
  • Nicolson and Webb (n 11) 170.
  • http://cdbu.org.uk.
  • Baron (n 24).
  • Sommerlad, ‘Researching and Theorizing’ (n 127).
  • Ibid. Perhaps this gives us a handle on why it should continue to be the case that ‘star’ academics in British universities ‘are so often white and male’: S Jones, The Guardian, 22 April 2013.
  • Thornton ‘Demise of Diversity’ (n 8).
  • Diane Reay (n 104) comments: ‘So what has happened to “the community of scholars” in the new manageri-alist era? I suggest that it has been reconfgured as an upper echelon of elite, mainly male, academics serviced by an army of casualised teaching, research and administrative staff, a poor shadow of what a community should be. And do I have any solutions?... I feel as complicit and compromised as many other academics are feeling... ensnared in contemporary neoliberal academia.’ See further Stephen Whitehead, ‘From Paternalism to Entrepreneurialism: The Experience of Men Managers in UK Post Compulsory Education’ (1999) 20(1) Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 57.
  • Duff and Webley (n 134) 394.
  • See n 76. Thus, Alan Norrie observes (‘These Are The Days' The Reporter (Winter 2011) 1), one may question the evoking of a ‘sense of change for the worse... of a more or less golden earlier period’ in accounts of changes in universities; ‘these were’, he warns, for those of us who remember university law schools of the not too distant past, ‘not so jolly times'. ‘Is it inevitable that the university will be reduced to the function of providing, with increasingly authoritarian effciency, pre-packed intellectual commodities which meet the requirement of management? Or can we... transform it into a centre of free discussion, and action, tolerating and even encouraging “subversive” thought and activity for a dynamic renewal of the whole society within which it operates?’ (cited by A Chakrabortty, The Guardian, 25 March 2014).
  • McGettigan (n 4) 175.
  • Campaign for the Public University, Review of Books, 9 April 2013, http://publicuniversity.org.uk/2013/04/09/review-of-books-focused-on-the-public-university.
  • Burrows (n 80) 368.
  • Smart (n 19).
  • See eg Jo Bostock, The Meaning of Success: Insights from Women at Cambridge (Cambridge University Press, 2014), suggesting gender differences in academic values attached to social success; Matthew Reisz, ‘Redefining Success May Help Women Achieve Potential’, Times Higher Education, 6 March 2014; Boris Groysberg and Robin Abrahams, ‘Manage Your Work, Manage Your Life’ (2014) 92(3) Harvard Business Review 58, suggesting marked differences in how male and female executives perceive career success.
  • Barcan (n 57).

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