This is the third book in a trilogy on late medieval nuns and the law of which the first two, focusing on canon law, were published in 1997 (Canon law and cloistered women: Periculoso and its commentators, 1298–1545) and 2005 (A pernicious sort of woman: quasi-religious women and canon lawyers in the later Middle Ages). The present volume discusses the extent to which English nuns, belonging to orders that strictly enforced enclosure (the Brigittine and Franciscan nuns), employed common and canon lawyers to fight their corner in the secular and ecclesiastical courts. Makowski is excellent in arguing that in one sense enclosure did not matter that much as the increased specialisation of litigation in England meant that any person untrained in law had to resort to specialists in order to have a hope of bringing a successful case to court. However, the fact that enclosure is cited in most documents as a reason why the abbess or prioress in question could not appear in person is an indication that the cloistered nuns relied to a greater extent on the advice of their (male) lawyers. The six English nunneries on which this study focuses were pretty wealthy with Syon, founded for the Bridgettine nuns, being the richest; others were the Minories (Franciscan) nuns of Waterbeach (later Denny Abbey) and Aldgate (London), as well as the Dominican nunnery at Dartford. The book consists of two parts. The first part covers the cloistered English nuns (ch. i), the canon and common law lawyers (ch. ii) and letters of appointment and routine business (ch. iii). In the second part, after an introductory chapter on proceedings of the common law (ch. iv), select cases are discussed in the chancery (ch. v), episcopal (ch. vi) and papal courts (ch. vii). The strength of this book lies in the comparative approach to the two legal systems with which the nuns had to cope. Although much work has been done on the history of the legal profession in later medieval England by John Baker, Paul Brand (common law) and James Brundage (canon law), Makowski's detailed research in the six archives has enabled her to add to their work, bringing up intriguing aspects. For example, two abbesses of Aldgate (Katherine Ingham and Eleanor Scrope) turn out to have been widows of distinguished common lawyers. Their late husbands' experience helped them in the recruitment of lawyers and prepared them for the tenacity that was needed to defend the interest of their institutions. None of the existing prosopographical studies on the common law include systematically information about its lawyers's women (mothers, wives, daughters). It seems to me that there is plenty of material in this respect for Makowski to turn her trilogy into a quartet.