Comparing Legal Professions Cross-Nationally: From a Professions-Centered to a State-Centered Approach

Abstract

Legal occupations vary dramatically from country to country-in scope of activity, education, organization, and institutional setting. This essay proposes to study legal occupations focusing on their relations to the state rather than on their character as 'lprofessions." It builds on the recent renaissance of state-centered approaches in the social sciences. A review of the diversity of law work and legal occupations in diflerent countries leads to state-centered conceptualizations that identify institutionally comparable features of law work. A sketch of the European historical background of modern legal professions yields theoretical principles that can in form the proposed approach. Variations in the role of the state and in the relation of lawyers to the state apparatus are then shown to be related to drflerences between national legal professions. Even where the law is primarily seen as a profession, the character of law work is better understood when related to the state.

Medical Professionalism in Society

“…They have acknowledged that professional selfregulation, although susceptible to abuse, serves necessary social functions. 19,22 Still, the earlier attacks on professionalism left this term with no coherent meaning. Lacking systematic knowledge about professionalism, many people use the term to refer to ill-defined, sometimes self-serving, concepts.…”

Representing the Bar: how the barristers' profession sells itself to prospective members

“…43 Certainly, the representations the Bar makes about itself to new recruits are not simple, direct or entirely reliable representations of the reality of professional life, either now or as it was in the past, let alone the value of professional knowledge to all groups in society. 44 In particular, the image of traditional community that the Bar creates is one that is more inviting to, and less demanding of, certain groups than others. Nonetheless, the 'professional project' approach and its derivational 'market control' critique, by design, reveal very little about the internal operations of recruitment, the nature of the 'self-image' that is projected, and the processes by, and the extent to which, a 'standardised commodity' is shaped.…”

The Financial Rewards of Elite Status in the Legal Profession

“…Indeed, because of labor market effects, social status is most precisely estimated by educational measures rather than other occupational criteria (Hauser and Warren 1997). Father's education is particularly apposite for studying inherited social status in the context of the legal profession, given the cultural dispositions and status hierarchies that are associated with professional success, and with lawyering as a “status group” (Heinz and Laumann 1982; Rueschemeyer 1986; Nordli Hansen 2001; Dinovitzer and Garth 2007). In this way, father's education is a measure of elite status by operating as inherited cultural capital.…”