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Specialty Bars As A Site Of Professionalism: The Immigration Bar Example, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

As the practice of law has become increasingly specialized, specialty bar associations have become more important to the work lives of many lawyers and their understanding of professional norms. This article looks at the role of a single specialty bar association - the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) - in the construction of its members’ norms and values. The article draws on semi-structured interviews with 71 immigration lawyers in the New York City metropolitan area to identify the ways in which specialty bars foster lawyers’ understanding of professional norms - both formally and informally - through education, information sharing, mentoring, …