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More Than One Lane Wide: Against Hierarchies Of Helping In Progressive Legal Advocacy, Rebecca Sharpless
More Than One Lane Wide: Against Hierarchies Of Helping In Progressive Legal Advocacy, Rebecca Sharpless
Rebecca Sharpless
Progressive legal scholars and practitioners have created a hierarchy within social justice lawyering. Direct service attorneys — nonprofit attorneys who focus on helping individuals in civil cases — sit at the bottom. In the 1960s, progressive theorists advanced a negative portrayal of direct service attorneys as a class. This discourse has continued through different phases in the development of progressive legal theory. Direct service work is done primarily by women in the service of women, has the aesthetic of traditional women’s work, and can be understood as embodying the thesis that women have a greater existential and psychological connection to …