1 Studying Legal Academics 1
Why Study Legal Academics? 1
‘Culture’and ‘Identity’ 4
‘Culture’ 5
‘Identity’ 10
Method 14
Conclusion 26
2 Legal Education and the Lived Experience of Legal Academics 27
Legal Education 27
Legal Education: Pedagogy 28
Legal Education: Policy 30
Legal Education: Approaches to Law 35
Inaugural Lectures and Other Occasional Writing 38
Historical Perspectives 39
Empirical Surveys of the Legal Academy 41
The ‘Private Life’ of Legal Academia 42
Conclusion 47
3 Inhabiting the Discipline of Law 49
Approaches to Law 49
A Discipline in Transition: From Doctrine to Socio-Legal Studies 54
The Impact of Feminism 60
The Future of the Discipline 63
Possible Difficulties Ahead 65
Anti-Intellectualism of Law 69
Conclusion 72
4 The Legal Academic Career 73
Careers and the Culture of Academic Law 73
Reading Law 73
The Legal Academic Career: Vocational or Academic? 75
Academia as Second Best 79
The Qualities/Skills of a ‘Good’ Academic Lawyer 81
Getting On 86
Success 92
Conclusion 95
5 The Experience of Being a Legal Academic 97
Introduction 97
Proud to be a Legal Academic? 97
Job Satisfaction 101
Autonomy 104
Variety 105
The Worst of Times 107
Working at Home 111
Work-Life Balance 113
Conclusion 118
6 Teaching and Research in the Legal Academy 121
Teaching 121
Lecturing as Performing 124
Teaching as Part of Professional identity 129
The Institutional Attitude to Teaching 130
Research in the Legal Academy 133
The RAE effect 135
Evaluation of the RAE 138
Conclusion 141
7 Inside and Outside the Academic World 143
Introduction 143
Administration 143
Outside Concerns 151
Networking 153
The Changing World 159
Conclusion 165
8 Identity Matters 167
Introduction 167
Gender 168
Class 175
Race, Ethnicity and Legal Academics 181
Sexual Orientation 183
Dressed for the Part 186
Conclusion 196
9 Conclusion 197
Introduction 197
Law as a Discipline 197
The Changing Culture of Academic Law 199
Different Perspectives on the Culture of Law: Old and New Universities 200
Key Aspects of Professional Identity 201
Other Identity Matters 203
‘Culture’, ‘Identities’ and the Discipline of Law 204
Bibliography 207
Index 223