Defending Rights in RussiaLawyers often play pivotal roles in building democracies. PamelaJordans engaging study of the Russian bar (advokatura) providesa richly textured portrait of how, after the USSRs collapse,practising lawyers called advocates began to assume new, self definedroles as contributors to legal reform and defenders of rights inRussia. Using the historical institutionalism approach as her analyticalframework and drawing from comparative literature on legal