GENDER IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION: FITTING OR BREAKING THE MOULD by Joan Brockman, UBC Press, Vancouver, 2001, xii + 259 pp, ISBN 0-7748-0834-9 GENDER, CHOICE AND COMMITMENT: WOMEN SOLICITORS IN ENGLAND AND WALES AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EQUAL STATUS by Hilary Sommerlad and Peter Sanderson, Aldershot UK and Brookfield USA, AshgateDartmouth, 1998, xii + 348 pp, ISBN 1-84014- 454-8 Law is resistant to looking at itself. It prefers to direct its gaze elsewhere but, even then, it is selective about its choice of lens. Legal positivism, which attempts to draw a line of demarcation between law and morality, law and history, law and sociology, and law and other sites of intellectual inquiry, encourages a technocratic approach. The myths of objectivity and neutrality that underpin this approach to legal interpretation have deluded the profession into believing that the same descriptors apply to its own practices. A major focus of feminist legal scholarship has involved the deconstruction of law's claims to objectivity in respect of all aspects of legal culture, including professional practices. The dramatic increase in women law students and practitioners over the last two decades has compelled scrutiny of the profession's partiality for 'Benchmark Man', the normative lawyer, who is white, heterosexual, able-bodied, middle class and, of course, male. When I began my study of women and the legal profession in ~ustralia' there was a dearth of scholarship on the topic, not only in Australia, but also in the United Kingdom and Canada, although some notable work had been done in the United ~ t a t e s . ~ A number of studies have since emerged from both the UK and canada3 in addition to the books under review. Strictly speaking, both 'the UK' and 'Canada' are geographical overstatements, as Sommerlad and Sanderson's study focuses on one region in the North of England, while Brockman's study is confined to British Columbia. The 'legal profession' must also be qualified. Sommerlad and Sanderson deal with solicitors generally, whereas Brockman restricts herself to a population of 50 men and 50 women lawyers who were called to the Bar between 1986 and 1990, and who were still members in 1993. The rationale for Brockman's selective focus is that decisions regarding career advancement, child bearing and raising all occur in the early years when attrition rates are at their highest. 1 Margaret Thornton. D~ssonance and D~strust: Wornen in the Legal Professron (1996). 2 For example, Cynthia F Epstein. Women m Law (1983). 3 Clare McGIynn. The Woman La~ryer: 12.lakmng the Difference (1998): John Hagan & Fiona Kay. Gender in Practrce: A Stud]. ofLa1ryers ' Lrves ( 1995).