- Legal Profession, Sociology of Law, Socio-legal studies, Legal Professions, Globalization, Intersectionality and Social Inequality, and 16 moreSocial Stratification, Gender, Gender and Development, Gender Equality, Sociology of work and organizations, Gender and Work, Legal Education, South Asia, India, Law and Society, Women and Work, Feminsms, International Migration, Family Law, International Family Law, and Legal Institutionsedit
- My research broadly rests at the intersection between law, globalization and stratification. Specifically, across a r... moreMy research broadly rests at the intersection between law, globalization and stratification. Specifically, across a range of sites and different levels of analysis, I interrogate how law and legal institutions create, continue, and counter different kinds of socio-economic inequalities. Together, these research interests have resulted in three main areas of empirical inquiry. The first is a set of interrelated projects analyzing inequality within legal institutions from a comparative perspective. The second line of inquiry concentrates on emerging trends in U.S. legal education and organizational diversity. A third emerging field of interest in my research is transnational migration and its implications for international human rights and family law.edit
This chapter is situated in these institutional crevices that have shaped women’s careers in the last 65 years in Indian legal academia. We make our case in two parts – first, we trace the women legal academics who have been central to... more
This chapter is situated in these institutional crevices that have shaped women’s careers in the last 65 years in Indian legal academia. We make our case in two parts – first, we trace the women legal academics who have been central to the Indian academy, their role as institutional change-makers and their ability to form more inclusive and gendered spaces. Next, we trace the women who have been central to the creation of legal scholarship without being in the academy. Together, we suggest that where we look for the women legal academics in India is central to how we archive their contributions. We argue that looking to assess the wealth of the research only via the scholar-academic model would lose sight of many others who have made important interventions without claiming this space. Our hope in archiving their collective contribution is not only to shed light on these multi-faceted academics, but also to draw attention to the problematic context of the historical law school site (and the ways its gendered and hierarchical blueprints might still stand in the way of real inclusivity for young women legal academics in the country).
Research Interests:
This Article uses the Indian case to offer nuance to narratives about the gendered experience of professional work. I find that while gendered constructs certainly infiltrate all workspaces, there remain occupational and organizational... more
This Article uses the Indian case to offer nuance to narratives about the gendered experience of professional work. I find that while gendered constructs certainly infiltrate all workspaces, there remain occupational and organizational differences in the ways in which women experience their environments. Particularly, while Indian women lawyers overall are more disadvantaged than their international counterparts, the experience of women lawyers in very elite law firms is more favorable than both their local and global peers. A confluence of factors might be responsible for this unusual experience of professional work, but this Article highlights the importance of one set of supply side dynamics: the variations in socializing experiences and expectations before entry into these firms. In doing so, it adds to the literature that suggests the importance of not just enrollment parity, but also early training and institutional socialization for gender egalitarian professional outcomes.
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Using the case of elite Indian professionals, this article offers a contrast to the robust literature suggesting collinearity between gender essentialism and inequality in organizational settings. Analyzing 139 interviews with... more
Using the case of elite Indian professionals, this article offers a contrast to the robust literature suggesting collinearity between gender essentialism and inequality in organizational settings. Analyzing 139 interviews with professionals in India’s elite litigation, transactional law, and consulting firms, it reveals that while gendered meanings and hierarchies certainly infiltrate all workspaces, not all trajectories for Indian women in high-status work are prematurely disadvantaged. Particularly, it suggests an unlikely positive valorization in the case of women working in new and elite law firms doing global transactional work. While other female professionals were dismissed or overlooked for not performing maleness in an organizational setting, it was the reverse for transactional lawyers who were regarded positively for similar traits. Instead of being passed over for opportunities or dismissed by their clients, many of these women were seen as best suited for handling the important, global work they were entrusted with and often requested on transactions. The limited case of these professionals reveals how in some new contexts, gendered assumptions about work can further rather than inhibit egalitarian outcomes. However, even as the theoretical extensions in highlighting this mechanism helps add nuance to our understandings of essentialism, it does so while confirming that even in moments of departure, equality is accessed within strictly patriarchal scripts in elite organizations.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Traditionally, legal practice in India, as in the rest of the world, has been a male dominated profession. Over the last two decades, however, India has responded to its call as an aggressively emerging economy by creating new kinds of... more
Traditionally, legal practice in India, as in the rest of the world, has been a male dominated profession. Over the last two decades, however, India has responded to its call as an aggressively emerging economy by creating new kinds of “global” legal work spaces that attract and offer seemingly gender-neutral advantages for its associates. Given the experience in many other parts of the world, we know that this novelty in structure alone doesn't secure advantages for women working within it. Accordingly, we might expect that gender-based disadvantages operate equally in this newly constructed global corporate sector. However, preliminary interviews with female lawyers in these firms suggest that women are not disadvantaged in these firms in the same ways that traditional accounts of the legal profession suggest. Borrowing from a line of social psychological research, one explanation for this advantage (to the extent that is exists) could be that these “global” organizations are seen as new institutions with little or no coherent gender based stereotypes attached to them and therefore, no frames of reference within which women can immediately be discriminated and/or disadvantaged. It is this ambiguity of gender frames at new sites of innovation that is the focus of this study. Using interviews from women lawyers in large law firms, legal outsourcing firms and traditional litigation practice, it attempts to shed light on the value of institutional factors in determining professional stratification and success.
Research Interests:
This Article studies the effects of an international credential for migrants who return to their home country-in this case, students who return to India with a US LL.M degree. Borrowing a framework from social psychology and... more
This Article studies the effects of an international credential for migrants who return to their home country-in this case, students who return to India with a US LL.M degree. Borrowing a framework from social psychology and organizational theory, it argues that international students with American law degrees who return to their countries of origin do not always benefit from the credential. Instead, trends from qualitative interview data suggest that repatriating an international credential-however prestigious-is a fluid process that requires emphasizing or obscuring ...
This article addresses the participation of international students in US law schools. Historically, international students congregated in U.S. law school graduate programs such as the LLM; while graduate degree programs still account for... more
This article addresses the participation of international students in US law schools. Historically, international students congregated in U.S. law school graduate programs such as the LLM; while graduate degree programs still account for the largest segment of international students studying law in the United States, there has been a concurrent rise in the number of international students who pursue a more mainstream U.S. law degree and choose the JD. In fact, in recent research we highlight that while certainly not a seamless assimilation, the percentage of international students in mainstream JD programs not only has increased substantially in the last decade but also has surpassed other domestic minority groups in certain instances.
In tracing these students and their mobility contexts, this Article makes three main contributions. First, it maps the changing demographics of international student participation in U.S. law schools and explores the factors shaping students’ preferences, including the relative importance of access to training opportunities, language, immigration status, prior work experience, and lawyer regulation and licensing (at home and abroad). In doing so, we highlight, following earlier work, the importance of local contexts in shaping students’ trajectories and the changes in these trends, especially with regard to what we term the “big Asia story.” Second, this Article offers a set of four metaphorical categories to help think about these empirical processes: sticky floors, springboards, stairways and slow escalators. Using each of these broad categories, we suggest that students find different sources of persuasion and pushback as they navigate their respective paths within law schools. Students’ decisions are molded at different stages by different actors and institutional constraints, with ultimate choices (and, therefore, tracks) reflecting a range of interactions between each of these constraints and capacities. Finally, the pathways provide a framework for theorizing about malleable social capital and recursive transnational theory. While global legal education is not technically a transnational legal order, the framework aids in thinking through the implications of these mapped paths and trends and the important perspective international students can offer to reveal the ways in which local and global actors emerge and intersect.
In tracing these students and their mobility contexts, this Article makes three main contributions. First, it maps the changing demographics of international student participation in U.S. law schools and explores the factors shaping students’ preferences, including the relative importance of access to training opportunities, language, immigration status, prior work experience, and lawyer regulation and licensing (at home and abroad). In doing so, we highlight, following earlier work, the importance of local contexts in shaping students’ trajectories and the changes in these trends, especially with regard to what we term the “big Asia story.” Second, this Article offers a set of four metaphorical categories to help think about these empirical processes: sticky floors, springboards, stairways and slow escalators. Using each of these broad categories, we suggest that students find different sources of persuasion and pushback as they navigate their respective paths within law schools. Students’ decisions are molded at different stages by different actors and institutional constraints, with ultimate choices (and, therefore, tracks) reflecting a range of interactions between each of these constraints and capacities. Finally, the pathways provide a framework for theorizing about malleable social capital and recursive transnational theory. While global legal education is not technically a transnational legal order, the framework aids in thinking through the implications of these mapped paths and trends and the important perspective international students can offer to reveal the ways in which local and global actors emerge and intersect.
Research Interests:
The face of post-independent Indian legal education has altered dramatically since the inception (and consequent replication) of the five-year national law school model. Whereas traditional Indian universities offered (and in some cases... more
The face of post-independent Indian legal education has altered dramatically since the
inception (and consequent replication) of the five-year national law school model.
Whereas traditional Indian universities offered (and in some cases continue to offer)
law as a three-year full or part-time graduate programme, the new national law schools
have sought to foster, through an intensive five-year model, a combined degree in law
and the arts with a strong commitment to improve existing legal infrastructure.
Indeed, with this ambition, these schools have spearheaded critical changes in syllabi
and structure to challenge a new generation of lawyers to think critically, analyse
comprehensively, and argue articulately. But more than twenty years after the Bar Council of India started the first law school dedicated to the multidisciplinary, socially influential teaching of law, now is the time perhaps for retrospection and analysis. What was the initial impetus that fostered the need for these law schools? And more importantly, have the schools met the ambitions that encouraged their consciously rushed growth? By (a) tracing the events that led to the inception of these schools, (b) locating their
historical impetus and functional direction, (c) understanding the differentiated role
of the national law school and (d) reviewing its limitations within the larger Indian
higher education landscape, this article seeks to answer these larger questions as well
as analyse critically the steps that are needed to regain sustainable momentum in the
movement towards a socially culpable and intellectually relevant legal education – is
it time for another inquiry?
inception (and consequent replication) of the five-year national law school model.
Whereas traditional Indian universities offered (and in some cases continue to offer)
law as a three-year full or part-time graduate programme, the new national law schools
have sought to foster, through an intensive five-year model, a combined degree in law
and the arts with a strong commitment to improve existing legal infrastructure.
Indeed, with this ambition, these schools have spearheaded critical changes in syllabi
and structure to challenge a new generation of lawyers to think critically, analyse
comprehensively, and argue articulately. But more than twenty years after the Bar Council of India started the first law school dedicated to the multidisciplinary, socially influential teaching of law, now is the time perhaps for retrospection and analysis. What was the initial impetus that fostered the need for these law schools? And more importantly, have the schools met the ambitions that encouraged their consciously rushed growth? By (a) tracing the events that led to the inception of these schools, (b) locating their
historical impetus and functional direction, (c) understanding the differentiated role
of the national law school and (d) reviewing its limitations within the larger Indian
higher education landscape, this article seeks to answer these larger questions as well
as analyse critically the steps that are needed to regain sustainable momentum in the
movement towards a socially culpable and intellectually relevant legal education – is
it time for another inquiry?
Research Interests:
This article addresses the participation of international students in US law schools. Historically, international students congregated in U.S. law school graduate programs such as the LLM; while graduate degree programs still account for... more
This article addresses the participation of international students in US law schools. Historically, international students congregated in U.S. law school graduate programs such as the LLM; while graduate degree programs still account for the largest segment of international students studying law in the United States, there has been a concurrent rise in the number of international students who pursue a more mainstream U.S. law degree and choose the JD. In fact, in recent research we highlight that while certainly not a seamless assimilation, the percentage of international students in mainstream JD programs not only has increased substantially in the last decade but also has surpassed other domestic minority groups in certain instances. In tracing these students and their mobility contexts, this Article makes three main contributions. First, it maps the changing demographics of international student participation in U.S. law schools and explores the factors shaping students’ preferences, including the relative importance of access to training opportunities, language, immigration status, prior work experience, and lawyer regulation and licensing (at home and abroad). In doing so, we highlight, following earlier work, the importance of local contexts in shaping students’ trajectories and the changes in these trends, especially with regard to what we term the “big Asia story.” Second, this Article offers a set of four metaphorical categories to help think about these empirical processes: sticky floors, springboards, stairways and slow escalators. Using each of these broad categories, we suggest that students find different sources of persuasion and pushback as they navigate their respective paths within law schools. Students’ decisions are molded at different stages by different actors and institutional constraints, with ultimate choices (and, therefore, tracks) reflecting a range of interactions between each of these constraints and capacities. Finally, the pathways provide a framework for theorizing about malleable social capital and recursive transnational theory. While global legal education is not technically a transnational legal order, the framework aids in thinking through the implications of these mapped paths and trends and the important perspective international students can offer to reveal the ways in which local and global actors emerge and intersect.