Diversity and Networking in Law School: Are Law Students from Diverse Backgrounds Disadvantaged?

人际网络是一种重要的、通常是看不见的方式，通过这种方式，等级制度得以出现和复制。特别是，在看似基于功绩的机构中，追踪这些网络可能会揭示出不平等的结构，其中不同的人口经历了系统性的差异。美国法律界提供了一个有用的网站来追踪这些不平等的过程，因为尽管它的异质性越来越强，但它仍然不平等。与许多专业人士一样，法律系的学生经常被鼓励建立“人脉”，但来自不同背景的学生--包括种族、性别、性取向、国家地位和阶层--可能会获得不同资源的社交网络或社会资本。这些“网络不平等”可能会影响不同结构的学生群体的法律教育价值，并最终形成学生经历和职业结果的差异。虽然对法律职业的研究强调了社会资本和人际关系对促进职业发展的重要性，但对早期职业社会化中网络的性质关注较少。特别是，尽管这项研究充斥着关于法学院期间以及之后很长一段时间不同职业阶段的种族、性别和国籍差异的描述，但对于法学院进入法学院和职业生涯第一年的过渡期时的临时经历，我们了解得还不够多。这一阶段很重要，因为它追踪了一种路径依赖的出现，这种依赖可以为不同的专业人士提供不同和不平等的服务，尽管它在结构上看起来是平等的。在早先对三所法学院的一年级法律系学生进行的纵向网络和访谈研究之后，这项研究旨在研究同一批法律学生与一系列参与者的社交网络，以评估社会联系对法律职业从学校到工作过渡的重要性。该项目将调查观察到的网络不平等是否可以解释不同类别学生的不同就业市场结果，以及学生在法学院职业生涯结束时的不同结果。这一创新的纵向数据集将提供对网络不平等所起的作用的洞察，不仅在塑造不同学生群体的经验差异方面发挥作用，而且最终还将提供这些结构性不平等在产生进入法律职业的不同路径方面所起的作用。此外，考虑到数据发布的时机，它还将提供一个独特的机会，来观察被新冠肺炎大流行扰乱的学生体验。虽然这个项目的重点是法学院和早期法律职业的不平等，但我们的发现的相关性可能超越法律专业，也延伸到与类似动态作斗争的组织，例如，非法律专业组织和教育组织。具体地说，这些发现可能提供机会，创造有意义的干预措施，可能会缓解现有的不平等，并促进法律专业内外更平等的结果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Interpersonal networks are an important, often invisible way through which hierarchies emerge and get reproduced. Particularly, in seemingly merit-based institutions, tracing these networks could reveal the unequal structures in which diverse populations experience systemic disparities. The American legal profession offers a useful site to track these processes of inequality because it remains unequal despite its increasing heterogeneity. Law students, like many professionals, are encouraged frequently to “network,” but students from a range of diverse backgrounds – including race, gender, sexual orientation, national status, and class – may have access to differentially resourced social networks, or social capital. These “network inequalities” may impact the value of legal education across differentially structured groups of students and ultimately shape differences in student experiences and career outcomes. Whereas research on the legal profession has highlighted the importance of social capital and relationships to promote careers, less attention has been paid to the nature of networks in early professional socialization. Particularly, while the research is rife with accounts about the racial, gendered, and nationality differences during law school and then, much later, during different career stages, not enough is known about the temporal experience of law school as it feeds into the transitional period between law school and the first years of professional careers. This period is important because it tracks the emergence of a path dependency that can serve diverse professionals differently and unequally even as it structurally seems equitable.Following an earlier longitudinal network and interview study of a cohort of first-year law students across three law schools, the research aims to examine the same law students’ social networks with a range of actors to evaluate the importance of social ties for the school-to-work transition in the legal profession. The project will investigate whether observed network inequalities can account for differential job market outcomes across diverse categories of students, as well as different outcomes at the end of students’ law school careers. This innovative, longitudinal dataset will provide insight into the role that network inequalities play in shaping not only variation in experiences across different groups of students, but ultimately the role that these structural inequalities play in producing differential pathways into the legal profession. Further, given the timing of the data, it will also provide a unique opportunity to observe student experiences disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the focus of this project is inequality in law schools and early legal careers, the relevance of our findings may extend beyond the legal profession, as well, to organizations struggling with similar dynamics, including non-law professional organizations and educational organizations, for example. Specifically, these findings may provide opportunities to create meaningful interventions that may mitigate existing inequalities and facilitate more equal outcomes within the legal profession and beyond.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.