Reflections on Female Fictional Lawyers

Being on a cruise ship has certainly slowed blogging. I can get on the internet usually when I want but the motivation level to blog is low.

My last post discussed Female Fictional Lawyers through a pair of academic articles and a list from my reading. In the law.arts.culture blog from the Osgoode Hall Law School, Kate Sutherland set out that lists from the American Bar Association and the Guardian of top fictional lawyers were male dominated. 

Looking at the ABA list it was mainly drawn from from T.V. series and movies. In my last post and this post I am focusing on lawyers from written crime fiction.

Sutherland continued that the pool of female fictional lawyers is smaller. The number of female fictional lawyers in crime fiction may have been lower, even 5 years ago, but I question whether there are fewer in current fiction.

I believe what has skewed the issue is that the trio of most prominent American legal fiction authors - Connelly, Grisham and Turow - all feature males as their primary characters. The authors draw disproportionate attention because of their success.

Not all of their lawyers are male. Connelly has Mickey Haller's ex-wife, Maggie "McFierce" McPherson as one of his lawyers and Grisham has the occasional female lawyer such as Reggie Love in The Client.

If any of them was to make a female lawyer the primary character in a series it is likely that fictional female lawyer would instantly gain public fame.

It seems unlikely to happen because authors have been creating fictional lawyers of their own sex. Grisham is an exception with Reggie Love. Canadian author, Robert Rotenberg, has also created a female lawyer in defence counsel, Nancy Parrish.

The seven authors listed in the William & Mary article - Gini Hartzmark, Lia Matera, Barbara Parker, Carolyn Wheat, Lisa Scottoline, Linda Fairstein and Christina McGuire - are all women who created female lawyers.

In the law.arts.culture blog at Osgoode Law School are mentioned Alafair Burke, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir, Margaret Atwood, Michele Martinez, Ruthann Robson, Cynthia Ozick and Sarah Caudwell. Once again all are women whose characters are female.

In my personal posts under Legal Mysteries I have books by 20 different authors. Beyond Grisham and Rotenberg there are four authors who have made lawyers of the opposite sex their primary characters. They are Rosemary Aubert, Robert Dugoni, Harper Lee and Paul Levine.

I do not think there is a special reason for the infrequency of opposite sex lawyers. The most successful legal crime fiction writer of all time, Harper Lee, made Atticus Finch the best known of all fictional lawyers.

As contemporary crime fiction is often a reflection of the society of the time I expect there to be a majority of female fictional lawyers in the future. In Canadian law schools female students now make up over 50% of the classes. When I started in 1972 my class was the first class in which 1/3 of the students were female.