A Profession in Transition? — Lawyers, The Market and Significant Others
| Published date | 01 November 1997 |
| Author | Gerard Hanlon |
| Date | 01 November 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.00117 |
A Profession in Transition? — Lawyers, The Market and
Significant Others
Gerard Hanlon*
There is an ever increasing literature on the changing nature of the professions
1
and
middle class work.
2
Accompanying this, is a growing interest amongst academics
about the future of professionalism within law.
3
This paper seeks to address certain
aspects of these debates by concentrating on the emergence of two relatively
independent sets of firms. It will analyse the possible transformation of the legal
profession into two spheres within the area of commercial law and, by implication,
the profession more generally.
The paper suggests that this transformation is important as it threatens the
striking degree of homogeneity which was found in the profession for much of the
fifty years after 1930.
4
In the past where fragmentation existed it was largely based
around spatial location.
5
However, it will be argued that today’s transition and,
possibly fragmentation, is not solely based on spatial location (although this is
obviously an element within this change) but on three inter-related factors:
The Modern Law Review Limited 1997 (MLR 60:6, November). Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
798
* Management Centre, King’s College, University of London.
This paper is one part of a research project which was funded by the University of Sheffield’s New
Academic Development initiative and was based at the University’s Institute for the Study of the Legal
Profession. I would like to thank my former colleagues at Sheffield for their assistance with this work,
particularly John Birds, Rob Bradgate, Graham Ferris, Joanna Shapland and Charlotte Villiers, all of whom
participated in the project. I would also like to thank Simon Roberts, Roger Brownsword and an
anonymous referee for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. And finally, I must acknowledge the
Max-Planck-Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg where I spent a wonderful
summer as a Visiting Research Fellow preparing, amongst other things, the final version of this paper.
1 The terms profession, professional, etc are used merely as labelling devices. The paper will not
attempt to define what a profession is, rather the term is used to denote those categories of work
which the general public acknowledge as ‘professional’. I would endorse the view that professions are
merely occupations which have achieved a certain status and power, as a result of various struggles
over past centuries. Hence they are subject to change and indeed those that do not adapt sufficiently
well or quickly are downgraded and lose their professional status.
2 T. Butler and M. Savage (eds), Social Change and the Middle Classes (London: UCL Press, 1995);
Gerard Hanlon, The Commercialisation of Accountancy: Flexible Accumulation and the
Transformation of the Service Class (London: Macmillan, 1994); Eliot Freidson, Professionalism
Reborn (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994); M. Savage, J. Barlow, P. Dickens and T. Fielding, Property,
Bureaucracy and Culture (London: Routledge, 1992); K. Russell and N. Abercrombie (eds),
Enterprise Culture (London: Routledge, 1991); Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society
(London: Routledge, 1989).
3 Michael Burrage, ‘From a Gentlemen’s to a Public Profession — Status and Politics in the History of
English Solicitors’ (1996) 3 International Journal of the Legal Profession 45–80; Alan Paterson,
‘Professionalism and the Legal Services Market’ (1996) 3 International Journal of the Legal
Profession 137; Hilary Sommerlad, ‘Managerialism and the Legal Profession: A New Professional
Paradigm’ (1995) 2 International Journal of the Legal Profession 159; Avrom Sherr, ‘Come of Age’
(1994) 1 The International Journal for the Study of the Legal Profession 1, 3; Philip A. Thomas,
‘Thatcher’s Will’ (1992) 19 Journal of Law and Society 1; R.G. Lee, ‘From Profession to Business —
The Rise and Rise of the City Law Firm’ (1992) 19 Journal of Law and Society 1, 31; Christopher
Stanley, ‘Justice Enters the Marketplace’ in K. Russell and N. Abercrombie (eds), ibid; Cyril Glasser,
‘The Legal Profession in the 1990s — Images of Change’ (1990) 10 Legal Studies 1, 1; Richard Abel,
The Legal Profession in England & Wales (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).
4 Burrage ibid, Paterson ibid.
5 Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts (London: Heinemann, 1967).
Certain firms have begun to re-organise their structures and to redefine their
definition of professionalism in order to avail of the opportunities presented to
them in some market sectors.
Firms are currently engaged in very different activities and market sectors.
Firms are to be differentiated by client type, ie there are different types of clients
with different levels of power and influence over legal practitioners.
In short, the contention of the paper is that those firms serving influential clients
and operating in the corporate sector are reorganising their firm structures and
redefining their concept of professionalism so that it entails a strong commercial-
entrepreneurial element, whereas those firms serving individual, non-influential
clients and markets are seeking to retain the older, more social service, version of
professionalism, which apparently held sway across most of the profession in the
recent past.
6
These tensions ensure that the two segments will have different, and
indeed possibly conflicting, interests in the future. The paper will seek to
demonstrate how this transition has affected the largest firms. Before doing so,
however, definitions of what I mean by ‘large commercial’ law firms and ‘elite’
firms need to be provided.
For the purposes of this paper, a large commercial law firm is a firm with
between 20 and 54 partners whose clients are generally medium to large, public or
private clients. The paper also refers to elite firms — these are firms with 55
partners or more, the majority of whose clients are large, publicly quoted firms or
state organisations. Both of these groups operate in the areas of corporate law
which are dominated by organisational clients and, indeed, the elite firms are
increasingly found in growing corporate specialisms such as intellectual property,
banking, etc. All other firms are referred to as small firms.
Past and contemporary change
The concepts of transition and fragmentation within the profession are not new.
However, today’s transition and division appears to be qualitatively different to the
transformations and divisions of the past. It is true that in the past there was
fragmentation. For example, City solicitors and provincial solicitors split on a
range of issues — the prospect of decentralising the courts divided them, as City
solicitors aligned themselves with the Bar against decentralisation in order to keep
agency work.
7
Financially, divisions were also apparent, as City firms were less
engaged in conveyancing than their provincial counterparts and were more likely
to earn their fees by acting for firms and wealthy individuals.
8
Indeed, divisions
between London and the provinces were so pronounced that the provincial
solicitors established their own professional body in 1847. However, by 1867 these
differences had lessened so that the two bodies could unite to create the modern
Law Society.
9
Despite these differences, the paper would suggest that there was not the form of
polarisation that exists today. Three points in particular highlight the vastness of
this contemporary gulf. First, there is evidence to suggest that although City firms
6 See Burrage, n 3 above and Paterson, n 3 above.
7 See Abel-Smith and Stevens, n 5 above, 135–165.
8 Judy Slinn, Linklaters and Paines — The First One Hundred and Fifty Years (London: Longman
Group UK Ltd, 1987) 106–117.
9 Abel-Smith and Stevens, n 5 above.
November 1997] A Profession in Transition?
The Modern Law Review Limited 1997 799
To continue reading
Request your trial