Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
This article addresses the debate about the significance of gender differences by analyzing patterns of interaction between lawyers and clients. It examines features of the language of lawyers and clients associated with the dominance and difference paradigms that are at the center of feminist theory. Talk characterized by dominance includes the control of discourse space, interruptions, topic control, and challenges. Features associated with a particular female “voice” include cooperative responses, affiliative requests, indirection, politeness, and the expression of emotion. Results show that women lawyers' talk is role behavior rather than gendered behavior, with little difference between men and women lawyers. Clients' speech is tempered by gender considerations, with both men and women clients expressing greater deference to men lawyers and women clients expressing cooperation and solidarity with all lawyers. It was mainly in reference to the occasional willingness to grant legitimacy to the clients' emotional concerns, as well as the stress on professional identity, that marked women lawyers' specific style of lawyering.
This article is based on research supported by the Ford Foundation and the Israel Foundation Trustees. An earlier version was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association Meeting in Toronto, Canada, 1995. I am grateful to colleagues who attended the session on Women and the Legal Profession I for their helpful comments. I also appreciate the discussions with Brenda Danet, Robert L. Cooper, Malcah Yaeger-Dror, and Shoshana Blum-Kulka at various stages of the project and the suggestions of the anonymous reviewers. Many thanks to Leonard Weller and Dafna Izraeli who read and commented on an initial draft. I also thank Dafna Izraeli for her kindness and support as well as for her original interpretation of some of the results.