The overlooked story of the immigrant lawyer experience in the United States: analyzing income differences in the American legal profession

Abstract

ABSTRACT The study of lawyers and legal professionals has long been fertile ground for socio-legal research. Such inquiries typically emphasize the role of these attorneys in shaping social processes and dealing with social problems, for example, with respect to class, gender, and racial inequality in the profession. By contrast, we present a macro-sociological study that examines how immigrant status influences income stratification among lawyers working in the United States. Contributing to the emerging field of legal demography, we use US Census data to analyze income differences between US-born and immigrant lawyers. The findings unveil how these differences are not due to immigrant status alone, but rather the result of other factors such as race, ethnicity, and gender in combination with immigrant status. Therefore, this inquiry contributes to the literature on the legal profession, law and society, and sociology of work by proposing an intersectional component to the debate on stratification and income inequality among lawyers.