Ronit Dinovitzer
Ronit Dinovitzer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is also a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, where she is Co-Director of the Research Group on Legal Diversity, and Affiliated Faculty in Harvard's Program on the Legal Profession. She serves as Editor of the Journal of Professions and Organization.
Bio
Ronit Dinovitzer is Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, where she is cross appointed to the Institute for Management and Innovation (IMI). She is also a Faculty Fellow at the American Bar Foundation in Chicago, where she is Co-Director of the Research Group on Legal Diversity, and Affiliated Faculty in Harvard's Program on the Legal Profession. She serves as Editor of the Journal of Professions and Organization. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Toronto.
Ronit is a sociologist of the professions. Through her research on the legal profession, Ronit draws together analyses of the professions with research in social policy, including the social organization of lawyers, the context of labor markets, and the role of gender and diversity in professional careers. She has taken leading roles with the After the JD project, the first national longitudinal study of law graduates in the US, and the Law and Beyond Study, the first national study of law graduates in Canada. Ronit's work also studies ethics within professional practice. In current research, she is studying the role of ethical decision-making and professional autonomy, through a qualitative project on the ways in which corporate lawyers interact with their clients.
Publications
Books
Nelson, Robert, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Ethan Michelson, Joyce Sterling, and David Wilkins. 2023. The Making of Lawyers' Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession, University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226828923 «link»
Nelson, Robert , Spencer Headworth, Ronit Dinovitzer, and David Wilkins, Editors. 2016. Diversity in Practice, Cambridge University Press. «link»
Articles
Levi, Ron, Ronit Dinovitzer and Wendy Wong. 2022. “Strategic Philanthropy and International Strategies: The Ford Foundation and Investments in Law Schools and Legal Education, 1951-2003.” Chapter in Globalization of Legal Education edited by Bryant Garth and Gregory Shaffer, Oxford University Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Meghan Dawe. 2020. “Lawyers in Canada.” Pp. 65-88 in Richard Abel and Ole Hammerslev (eds.) Lawyers in 21st Century Societies: National Reports. Hart Publishing.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2020. “The new place of
corporate law firms in the structuring of elite legal careers.” Law and Social Inquiry.
Kelly, Khim, Dinovitzer, Ronit, Sally Gunz, Hugh Gunz. 2020. “The Interaction of Perceived Subjectivity and Pay Transparency on Professional Judgment in a Profit Pool Setting: The Case of Large Law Firms.” The Accounting Review. https://doi.org/10.2308/accr-52612
Nelson, Robert, Ioana Sendroiu and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2019. “Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace.” Law and Social Inquiry. 44:4, 1051-1082. doi:10.1017/lsi.2019.4
Gabbioneta, Claudia, James Faulconbridge, Graeme Currie, Ronit Dinovitzer, Daniel Muzio. 2018. "Inserting professionals and professional organizations in studies of wrongdoing: The nature, antecedents and consequences of professional misconduct." Human Relations.
Koltai, Jon, Scott Schieman, Ronit Dinovitzer. 2018. “The Status-Health Paradox: Organizational Context, Stress Exposure, and Well-Being in the Legal Profession.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 59(1), 20–37.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Meghan Dawe. 2016. “Early legal careers in comparative context: evidence from Canada and the United States.” International Journal of the Legal Profession 23:1, 83-107.
Dawe, Meghan and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2016. “Immigrant Offspring in the Legal Profession: Exploring the Effects of Immigrant Status on Earnings among American lawyers,” Pp. 383-484 in in Diversity in Practice, Cambridge University Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2015. “The changing landscape of corporate legal practice: An empirical study of lawyers in large corporate law firms.” Canadian Bar Review 93:2, 343-369.
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2015. Law and Beyond: A National Study of Canadian Law Graduates. «link»
Wilkins, David B. and Fong, Bryon and Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2015. The Women and Men of Harvard Law School: The Preliminary Results from the HLS Career Study (May 22, 2015). HLS Center on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2015-6. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2015. “Professional Ethics: Origins, applications and developments”, in Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms, edited by Laura Empson, Daniel Muzio, Joe Broschak, and Bob Hinings, Oxford University Press. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2015. “Lawyers and the Legal Profession,” Pp. 105-117 in Wiley Handbook of Law and Society, edited by Austin Sarat and Patricia Ewick, Wiley. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2015. "In-House and Outside Counsel: Working Together to Uphold the Profession" CCCA Magazine Spring(01):14-15. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Corporate Lawyers and their Clients: Walking the Line between Law and Business.” International Journal of the Legal Profession 21(1):3-21. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Unpacking
Client Capture: Evidence from corporate law firms,” Journal
of Professions and Organization 1(2): 99-117. «link»
**Winner of the Journal of Professions and Organization's 2014/5
Best Paper Award
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Reconsidering Lawyer Autonomy: The Nexus Between Firm, Lawyer and Client in Large Commercial Practice.” American Business Law Journal 51(3):66 «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and John Hagan. 2014. “Hierarchical Structure and Gender Dissimilarity in American Legal Labor Markets.” Social Forces 92(3):929-955. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Bryant G. Garth, and Joyce Sterling. 2013. “Buyers' Remorse? An Empirical Assessment of the Desirability of a Legal Career.” Journal of Legal Education 63:211-234. «link»
Taylor, Judith, Ron Levi and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2012. "Homeland Tourism, Emotion, and Identity Labor." Du Bois Review 9:67-85.
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2011. "The Financial Rewards of Elite Status in the Legal Profession." Law & Social Inquiry 36: 971–998.«link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2011. “Women in the Legal Profession: Findings from a Longitudinal Study of US Law Graduates.” For the Defence 32(4):50-57.
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Nancy Reichman and Joyce Sterling. 2009. "The Differential Valuation of Women's Work: A New Look at the Gender Gap in Lawyers' Incomes." Social Forces 88:819-854. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, John Hagan and Ron Levi. 2009. "Immigration and Youthful Illegalities in a Global Edge City." Social Forces 88:337-372. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2009. "Pro Bono as an Elite Strategy in Early Lawyer Careers" in Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession, edited by Robert Granfield and Lynn Mather, Oxford University Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2009. "Not That Into
You" American Lawyer.
September 1, 2009. «link»
Dawson, Myrna and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2008. "The Evolution of
Specialized Domestic Violence Courts in Ontario," in What's
Law Got to Do With It? The Law, Specialized Courts and Domestic
Violence in Canada, edited by J. Ursel, L. Tutty and J.
leMaistre. Toronto: Cormorant Press.
Hagan, John, Ron Levi and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2008. "The Symbolic Violence of the Crime-Immigration Nexus: Migrant Mythologies in the Americas." Criminology & Public Policy 7:95-112. «link»
Wilkins, David, Ronit Dinovitzer & Rishi Batra. 2007. "Urban Law School Graduates in Large Law Firms." Southwestern University Law Review 36:433-507.
Sterling, Joyce, Ronit Dinovitzer and Bryant G. Garth. 2007. "The Changing Social Role of Urban Law Schools." Southwestern University Law Review. 36:389-432.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Myrna Dawson. 2007. "Family-Based Justice
in the Sentencing of Domestic Violence." British
Journal of Criminology 47:655-670. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2007. "Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers." Law & Society Review 41:1-50.«link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and John Hagan. 2006. "Lawyers on the Move: The Consequences of Mobility for Legal Careers." International Journal of the Legal Profession 13:119-135. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2006. "Social Capital and Constraints on Legal Careers." Law & Society Review 40:445-480. «link»
Nelson, Robert, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, Joyce Sterling, Gita Wilder and Terry Adams. 2006. "Observations from the After the Bar Survey of the Bar Class of 2000." Quinnipiac Law Review 24:539-554.
Dinovitzer, Ronit, John Hagan, and Patricia Parker. 2003. "Choice and Circumstance: Social Capital and Planful Competence in the Attainments of Immigrant Youth." Canadian Journal of Sociology 28:463-488.
Dawson, Myrna and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2001. "Victim Cooperation and the Prosecution of Domestic Violence in a Specialized Court." Justice Quarterly 18:593-622. [Awarded the Graduate Student Paper Award by the American Sociological Association, Sociology of Law Section, 2000 and the Gene Carte Award, First Prize, American Society of Criminology, 2000].
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Jeffrey S. Leon. 2001. "When Long Becomes too Long: Legal Culture and Litigators' Views on Long Civil Trials." Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 19:106-160.
Hagan, John and Ronit Dinovitzer. 1999. "Collateral Consequences
of Imprisonment for Children, Communities and Prisoners." Crime
and Justice: A Review of Research 26:121-162, Prisons,
edited by M. Tonry and J. Petersilia. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 1997. "The Myth of Rapists and Other Normal Men: The Impact of Psychiatric Considerations on the Sentencing of Sexual Assault Offenders." Canadian Journal of Law and Society 12:147-169.
Reports and Working Papers
Wilkins, David B. and Fong, Bryon and Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2015. The Women and Men of Harvard Law School: The Preliminary Results from the HLS Career Study (May 22, 2015). HLS Center on the Legal Profession Research Paper No. 2015-6.
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2015. Law and Beyond: A National Study of Canadian Law Graduates. Available at: «link»
Plickert, Gabriele, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant G. Garth, Robert Nelson, Gabriele Plickert, Rebecca Sandefur, Joyce Sterling, and David Wilkins. 2014. “After the JD III: Third Results from a National Study of Legal Careers.” American Bar Foundation and NALP.
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Robert Nelson, Gabriele Plickert, Rebecca Sandefur, and Joyce Sterling. 2010. “After the JD II: Second Results from a National Study of Legal Careers.” American Bar Foundation and NALP. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Bryant Garth, Richard Sander, Joyce Sterling, and Gita Wilder. 2004. After the JD: The First Results of a National Study of Legal Careers. The NALP Foundation for Law Career Research and Education and the American Bar Foundation. «link»
Hagan, John and Ronit Dinovitzer. 1999. "Social Capital and the Migration of Law Students and Lawyers Between Geographic and Practice Areas." Final Report submitted to the Law School Admission Council.
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 1998. Attitudes Towards Long Civil Trials: A Survey of the Members of The Advocates' Society. Toronto: The Advocates' Society.
Work in Progress
“Legal Careers in the Context of Hegemonic Masculinity: Gender
and the Parenthood Earnings Premium” (with Andreea Mogosanu).
Under review.
“The golden age of corporate law to the present: change and
continuity in the legal field” (with Bryant Garth).
“Do Professional Women Belong? How Cultural Narratives of Fit
Shape Gender Inequality” (with Ron Levi and Andreea Mogosanu).
“Fictional Futures” (with Meghan Dawe).
After the JD
The After the JD (AJD) project is an empirical study of a
nationally representative cohort of almost 5,000 new lawyers. The
AJD study design is longitudinal, following the careers of new
lawyers over the first ten years following law school graduation;
the first cohort of lawyers was surveyed in 2002-03, the second in
2007-08, and the third contact commenced in 2012.
While a main emphasis of the study is to broadly chart the career
outcomes of these lawyers, a further emphasis of this study is to
analyze the structure of the legal profession by investigating the
sorting process through which lawyers come to occupy various
positions within the profession. By analyzing the various forms of
capital—human, social and symbolic—accumulated by lawyers over
their life course, After the JD will bring to light the forms of
capital that are valued and rewarded within the legal profession,
the social and professional contexts that lead to differential
valuations, and how these processes of opportunity and reward may
be changing over time.
After the JD (Wave 3) is funded by: American Bar Foundation, NALP
Foundation for Law Career Research and Education, NALP, and
National Science Foundation. For further details, refer to the project's
website.
Publications
Book
Nelson, Robert, Ronit Dinovitzer, Bryant Garth, Ethan Michelson, Joyce Sterling, and David Wilkins. 2023. The Making of Lawyers' Careers: Inequality and Opportunity in the American Legal Profession, University of Chicago Press. ISBN: 9780226828923 «link»
Articles
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2020. “The new place of
corporate law firms in the structuring of elite legal careers.” Law and Social Inquiry.
Nelson, Robert, Ioana Sendroiu and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2019. “Perceiving Discrimination: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation in the Legal Workplace.” Law and Social Inquiry. 44:4, 1051-1082. doi:10.1017/lsi.2019.4
Koltai, Jon, Scott Schieman, Ronit Dinovitzer. 2018. “The Status-Health Paradox: Organizational Context, Stress Exposure, and Well-Being in the Legal Profession.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 59(1), 20–37.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Meghan Dawe. 2016. “Early legal careers in comparative context: evidence from Canada and the United States.” International Journal of the Legal Profession 23:1, 83-107.
Dawe, Meghan and Ronit Dinovitzer. 2016. “Immigrant Offspring in the Legal Profession: Exploring the Effects of Immigrant Status on Earnings among American lawyers,” Pp. 383-484 in in Diversity in Practice, Cambridge University Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and John Hagan. 2014. “Hierarchical Structure and Gender Dissimilarity in American Legal Labor Markets.” Social Forces 92(3):929-955. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Bryant G. Garth, and Joyce Sterling. 2013. “Buyers' Remorse? An Empirical Assessment of the Desirability of a Legal Career.” Journal of Legal Education 63:211-234. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit. 2011. "The Financial Rewards of Elite Status in the Legal Profession." Law & Social Inquiry 36: 971–998.«link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Nancy Reichman and Joyce Sterling. 2009. "The Differential Valuation of Women's Work: A New Look at the Gender Gap in Lawyers' Incomes." Social Forces 88:819-854. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2009. "Pro Bono as an Elite Strategy in Early Lawyer Careers" in Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession, edited by Robert Granfield and Lynn Mather, Oxford University Press.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2009. "Not That Into You" American Lawyer. September 1, 2009. «link»
Wilkins, David, Ronit Dinovitzer & Rishi Batra. 2007. "Urban Law School Graduates in Large Law Firms." Southwestern University Law Review 36:433-507.
Sterling, Joyce, Ronit Dinovitzer and Bryant G. Garth. 2007. "The Changing Social Role of Urban Law Schools." Southwestern University Law Review. 36:389-432.
Dinovitzer, Ronit and Bryant G. Garth. 2007. "Lawyer Satisfaction in the Process of Structuring Legal Careers." Law & Society Review 41:1-50.«link»
Ethics, the Professional Service Firm and Corporate Governance
With Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. Funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario and the Alberta Law Foundation.
This project examines one of the more troubling aspects of the corporate failures of the turn of the century: how highly trained professionals, governed by and committed to strong codes of ethics, allowed themselves to become active participants in and sometimes facilitators of questionable business practices. Following the collapse of Enron and Arthur Andersen, the primary public and academic focus was upon the role of the auditors. In this project we turn to the role of lawyers and ethical practices, with a particular focus on lawyers working in large commercial law firms.
The data for this study come from interviews with 106 lawyers from corporate law firms in Canada. The majority of the respondents in the present study work in law firms that are among the largest in the country, with offices in multiple cities as well as internationally. The sample was selected in proportion to licensed lawyers in the four cities selected for the study: 66 in Toronto, 20 in Montreal, 10 in Calgary and 10 in Vancouver.
Publications
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2015. "In-House and Outside Counsel: Working Together to Uphold the Profession" CCCA Magazine Spring(01):14-15. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Corporate Lawyers and their Clients: Walking the Line between Law and Business.” International Journal of the Legal Profession 21(1):3-21. «link»
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Unpacking
Client Capture: Evidence from corporate law firms,” Journal
of Professions and Organization 1(2): 99-117. «link»
**Winner of the Journal of Professions and Organization's 2014/5
Best Paper Award
Dinovitzer, Ronit, Hugh Gunz and Sally Gunz. 2014. “Reconsidering Lawyer Autonomy: The Nexus Between Firm, Lawyer and Client in Large Commercial Practice.” American Business Law Journal 51(3):66 «link»
Law & Beyond {LAB} Study
The {LAB} study is the first national study of Canadian law graduates, and provides an in depth look at early careers through a study of Canadian lawyers admitted to the bar in 2010. This project is funded by funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
The final report has now been
released, and is available here.
Key findings are available here.
With responses from almost 1100 law graduates across the country,
this study is providing a first ever glimpse of law graduates'
first jobs, insight into what they do, their income and debt, and
the sources of professional satisfaction and dissatisfaction. The
report also provides insights on the legal careers of women and
members of racial and ethnic minority groups.
Contact
Ronit Dinovitzer
Department of Sociology
University of Toronto
Unit 17100, 17th Floor, Ontario Power Building
700 University Ave., Toronto, ON M5G 1Z5
email: ronit dot dinovitzer at utoronto dot ca