My father pointed out that this year is the 60th anniversary of the release of Adam's Rib, a movie about a married lawyer couple (played by Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn). I didn't much like the movie, but since I'm a lawyer married to a lawyer, my brother is a lawyer married to a lawyer, both of the other founding conspirators (Jonathan Adler, then Juan Non-Volokh, and Michelle Boardman, who left the blog when she took a Justice Department job) are lawyers married to lawyers, and the two judges for whom I've clerked (Judge Kozinski and Justice O'Connor) are married to lawyers, I thought I'd note the anniversary here.
These days I joke that lawyers are legally obligated to marry other lawyers, reflecting a pattern that I see throughout my circle. (It may well be different in other legal subcommunities in other places.) But once, for obvious reasons, it was unusual enough to be seen as meriting a movie.
Of course, women lawyers were also not so unheard of at the time that the plot device would be seen as too fantastic: Women judges had been around since the 1920s, a woman had been appointed Assisant Attorney General in 1921, and women lawyers had been practicing law for some decades before then. A woman's life as a lawyer was of course not easy then, and I suspect that in many places there were no women lawyers at all. But there had been some women in American law, and in high places in American law, for quite a while, rather longer than I had thought before I looked into the matter.
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In my small subcommunity (lawyers working in a federal agency in DC), the female lawyers tend to be married to male lawyers, but the male lawyers tend to marry teachers (particularly elementary school teachers).
Wait a minute -- which direction is victory?
In the whole, is this really that surprising? Similarly minded people with similar interests generally make pretty good partners. I was in Alpha Phi Omega, a coed service fraternity, in college, and I need two hands just to count the number of couples who formed from members of my chapter alone. If I go on to inter-chapter relationships and pairings inside other chapters, it just gets ridiculous.
Only a lawyer or a crazy man ,or woman, will marry a lawyer.
I f you are not a lawyer in the divorce you will get only your hands to cover yourself.
Most of my law class is divorced, some of them 3 times. Its not the same with the people that studied with me in Highschool.
Look in a textbook what are the supposed effect of phiconanalisys on people, you will see that they describe a lawyer.
FWIW, I don't care much for the movie, either. That's not saying much. I don't care for many of the movies Tracey and Hepburn made together.
EV: Is there some particular reason that you use phrases like "women lawyers" or "woman lawyer" rather than, say "female lawyer(s)"? I have never heard of a man doing job X as a "man job Xer". Since only humans are allowed to become lawyers, "male" and "female" (and "neuter" and "hermaphroditic") would be specific enough, no?
484,000 hits on "women lawyers"
59,000 hits on "female lawyers"
14,900 hits on "men lawyers" and
14,700 hits on "male lawyers".
So "women lawyers" certainly seems to be the most popular usage. But specifically why that is ...
I did and I resemble that remark.
The judge isn't issuing a verdict, he's simply declaring the sentence. (Til death do you... oh wait, see Katl L's post.)
(Cary Grant is magnificent as always.)
And six years before The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, prosecuting attorney Fred MacMurray fell in love with defendant Barbara Stanwyck in Remember the Night.
Not that Hollywood had any original ideas. Several years earlier in the wonderful Picture-Snatcher (a movie with an interesting freedom of the press angle), James Cagney plays a reformed convict whose love interest is the daughter of the policeman who arrested him!
A. Because no one else will.
How can the lady lawyers be married to male lawyers, when the male lawyers are all married to teachers? ;)
As per above, it's not "female lawyer" - it's "lady lawyer." (I say this as a former lady engineer.)
Finally - advice from one of my older male friends is to NOT marry a lawyer. Something about too much competition.
Why this is I'm not sure, but the term "female" sounds more technical or scientific and is typically used when the body and its structure is more to the fore, as in the phrase "female athlete" and "female patient." When the gender identity is more to the fore, it sounds odd.
Some pressure in the other direction comes from the fact that "female" is an adjective, "woman" a noun. But "female" does not mean "of or pertaining to a woman." It means being of a certain sex, irrespective of what sort of living thing the subject is; it has nothing to do with humanity in particular, whereas "woman" obviously does.
-and likewise "female lawyer".
I don't know, I've always said I would never marry another lawyer because I don't want another damned lawyer in the family.
Why not priestesses? Does any group use that term today?
"Lawyers should never marry other lawyers. This is called inbreeding, from which comes idiot children and more lawyers."
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