Leading legal professions scholar shares her expertise with colleagues in Chile
At the invitation of Dr Marianne Gonzalez, Professor Hilary Sommerlad has just completed a month as a visiting professor at the University of Chile's Faculty of Law.
Professor Sommerlad’s reputation as a leading scholar in the field of legal professions, with particular expertise on women lawyers, had prompted Dr Gonzalez to apply for funding to make the visit possible. Professor Sommerlad had met Dr Gonzalez in 2017 at the annual meeting of the US Law & Society Association, in Mexico City, when she was working with Professors Rick Abel, Ulrike Shultz and Ole Hammerslev on an international study of the world’s legal professions (Lawyers in 21st-Century Societies, Vol. 1: National Reports and Vol 2. Comparisons and Theories).
Gender and the legal profession
During her visit to Chile, Professor Sommerlad took part in various activities including a workshop on Gender and the Legal Profession, where she presented on a recent paper ‘Change, continuity and crisis in the legal profession: the role of gender’, and a forthcoming article ‘Strategies for career advancement: reflections on female corporate lawyers’ struggle for full professional recognition’.
The presentations of other participants (who included leading Latin American scholars on women lawyers and diversity in the judiciary) revealed fascinating parallels with the problems encountered by women in the UK profession.
However, a meeting with the Technical Secretariat on Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination of the Supreme Court indicated that in many ways feminism has made more significant inroads into the Chilean profession than is the case in the UK: Professor Sommerlad is a founder member of a group of academics and practitioners seeking to diversify the UK judiciary – the Judicial Diversity Initiative: Equal participation by 2020 – which has met with only limited success.
Commonalities and differences
Professor Sommerlad reflected further on the commonalities and differences between the two jurisdictions in a lecture to the Faculty of Law: ‘Change, continuity and crisis in the legal profession: the role of gender’, and in a roundtable meeting with Chilean law professors on the legal profession, Legal Education and legal ethics.
Professor Sommerlad was also invited to deliver the keynote at the fourth meeting of the Chilean Law and Society Association: IV Congreso de Derecho y Sociedad de Chile, University of Concepcion, where she spoke about the threat posed to the rule of law by the rise in right wing ethno-nationalism in a presentation entitled ‘De-professionalisation, democracy and the rule of law: the case of social justice lawyers in the UK’. She believes that, sadly, the political situation in Chile means that this theme is particularly apposite.
Professor Sommerlad says:
Chile is a beautiful country, and the socio-legal community is extremely vibrant and welcoming. It was made clear that they would be delighted to strengthen links with UK scholars, and I would be happy to support any such moves.
Professor Sommerlad is the Co-Director of the Legal Professions Research Group, and a member of the Centre for Law and Social Justice and the Centre for Innovation and Research in Legal Education.
