{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019620253164556962, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.506172839506172, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
An Equal Place?

This concluding chapter considers how local movements to make Los Angeles a more equal place—one in which marginalized workers have greater protections, better wages and benefits, and a larger voice in the workplace and politics—have depended on a new generation of lawyers, embedded in local networks and committed to local action, who have negotiated an equal place of their own in advancing economic justice campaigns. It does so by exploring the larger contributions of the book’s five case studies: assessing what they teach about the meaning of equality both as a process and an outcome of legal advocacy in the contemporary American metropolis. To do so, the chapter offers two perspectives on local legal mobilization, one empirical and the other theoretical. First, from an empirical perspective, it synthesizes evidence from the case studies to evaluate the central role that lawyers have played in the struggle for economic justice in Los Angeles—and how their leadership has contributed to regulatory change strengthening workers’ economic rights and political representation. Second, from a theoretical perspective, the chapter reflects on the book’s lessons for the study of lawyering, labor, and local government law, drawing attention to how the L.A. campaigns inform critical normative aspirations within each field—the possibility of reviving progressive lawyering to address the challenges of neoliberalism, rehabilitating federal labor law to contest economic inequality, and reimagining local government law as a catalyst for national reform.