English Lawyers between Market and State

The Politics of Professionalism

Richard L Abel

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English

Oxford University Press
01 June 2004

Law; Legal skills & practice; Legal profession: general; Legal system: general

Series: Oxford Socio-Legal Studies

Toward the end of the twentieth century, English lawyers enjoyed widespread respect and prosperity. They had survived criticism by practitioners and academics and a Royal Commission enquiry, but the final decade witnessed profound changes. First the Conservatives sought to apply laissez-faire principles to the profession. Then Labour transformed the legal aid scheme it had created half a century earlier. At the same time, the profession confronted cumulative changes in higher education and women's aspirations, internal and external competition, and dramatic fluctuations in demand. This book analyses the politics of professionalism during that tumultuous decade, the struggles among individual producers (barristers, solicitors, foreign lawyers, accountants) their associations, consumers (individual and corporate, public and private) and the state to shape the market for legal services by deploying economic, political and rhetorical resources (including changing conceptions of professionalism).

The profession had to respond to a greatly increased production of law graduates and the desire of lawyer mothers (and also fathers) to raise their families. It had to replace exclusivity with efforts to reflect the larger society (class, race, gender). The Bar needed to address challenges to its exclusive rights of audience from both solicitors and employed barristers and decide whether to retaliate by permitting direct access, thereby compromising its claim to be a consulting profession. Solicitors had to reconcile their invocation of market principles against the Bar with their resistance to corporate conveyancing and multidisciplinary practices. Government had to restrain a demand-led legal aid scheme; practitioners and their associations sought to pressure the government to expand eligibility and raise remuneration rates.

Divisions within both branches so compromised self-regulation and governance that the government even threatened to deprive lawyers of those essential elements of professionalism. These challenges have begun a transformation of the legal profession that will shape its evolution throughout the twenty-first century.

By: Richard L Abel
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 41mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9780198260349
ISBN 10: 0198260342
Series: Oxford Socio-Legal Studies
Pages: 752
Publication Date: 01 June 2004
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Richard Abel is Connell Professor of Law, UCLA. He is a member of the Bars of New York and Connecticut.

Reviews for English Lawyers between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism

Richard Abel's most recent project has turned history like a craftsman to provide us with a punctilious chronicle of a transformative period in English legal politics. Those who take up this book will be rewarded with what might be the best account of how one country's legal profession-understood as a collectivity but the creature of individual and sub-group action-attempts to maintain its traditional position of strength in the face of external assaults and internal discord. --The Law and Politics Book Review<br>