Countries undergoing or recovering from conflict and authoritarianism often face profound rule of law challenges. In this workshop, Professor Kieran McEvoy, Professor Louise Mallinder and Dr Anna Bryson, authors of a new book on the role of lawyers in conflict and transition, will discuss how lawyers as ‘real people’ navigate these challenges:

• How do they exercise resistant agency and at the same time maintain a sense of professional legitimacy?
• How do lawyers working within such settings imagine the law?
• How do they understand their ethical obligations towards their clients and the rule of law?
• What factors motivate them to use their legal practice and social capital to challenge repressive power?
• What challenges and risks do they face?
• Are there particularly gendered consequences for ‘taking on’ legal resistance in such contexts?
• When do lawyers facilitate or acquiesce with injustice, thus becoming part of the problem?

Drawing on over 130 interviews conducted during field research in Cambodia, Chile, Israel, Palestine, South Africa, and Tunisia, the book extends existing theoretical understandings of law and society and cause lawyering in particular by exploring their application (or not) in these more challenging environments.

The workshop will be held in-person. Places will be limited to 17 and must be booked in advance. To facilitate this discussion, attendees will be forwarded reference material once they have has registered.