Women and Justice for the Poor: A History of Legal Aid, 1863–1945

by Felice Batlan

This book re-examines fundamental assumptions about the American legal profession and the boundaries between 'professional' lawyers, 'lay' lawyers, and social workers. Putting legal history and women's history in dialogue, it demonstrates that nineteenth-century women's organizations first offered legal aid to the poor and that middle-class women functioning as lay lawyers, provided such assistance. Felice Batlan illustrates that by the early twentieth century, male lawyers founded their own legal aid societies. These new legal aid lawyers created an imagined history of legal aid and a blueprint for its future in which women played no role and their accomplishments were intentionally omitted. In response, women social workers offered harsh criticisms of legal aid leaders and developed a more robust social work model of legal aid. These different models produced conflicting understandings of expertise, professionalism, the rule of law, and ultimately, the meaning of justice for the poor.

238 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2015

Reviews

[Alisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for my dissertation, and I really enjoyed it. While it's definitely more a work of history, it seems to be rather sociologically informed. While I would say that I have a pretty solid understanding of the history of the American legal profession, this book kind of blew my mind with how it revealed the organizational development of support structures for those in need of legal help and how that appears to have contributed to the professionalization efforts of the legal profession that precipitated concurrently and the gendered dynamics thereof. I'll be thinking about this book for awhile. It definitely invigorated my sociological imagination as both a law and society scholar and an "orgs person." :)

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent ground breaking history of the founding of legal aid and how women invented this service. Overturns all previous histories, written by men which claimed males started legal aid.

A page turner.