Abstract
The premise of this Article is that, in his assertion that client service work is political lawyering, Ralph Reed is right. Indeed, Gary Bellow made a similar point about the political content of both impact litigation and client service work in a classic article written almost twenty years ago. Of course, Reed and Bellow are hardly ideological soulmates. Reed disapproves of the political content of service work, while Bellow heartily endorses it. On that point, this Article sides with Bellow. It employs the example of domestic violence lawyering to demonstrate why Bellow and Reed are correct that client service work has political content, and why Bellow is right that such political content is central to providing legal services to poor people. This Article situates the impact litigation/client service debate as one of three dichotomies which privilege detachment over connection in legal practice. The other dichotomies in this trio divide the professional from the personal and the public from the private.
Recommended Citation
Peter Margulies,
Political Lawyering, One Person at a Time: The Challenge of Legal Work Against Domestic Violence for the Impact Litigation/Client Service Debate,
3
Mich. J. Gender & L.
493
(1996).
Available at:
https://repository.law.umich.edu/mjgl/vol3/iss2/3