Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2007.00388.x |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 34, NUMBER 2, JUNE 2007
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 190±217
Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional
Identity Formation
Hilary Sommerlad*
This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both
the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between
individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational repro-
duction. The research project on which the paper is based was
stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education
institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an
increasingly diverse profession negotiate the changing demands of a
complex stratified and segmented labour market. The paper will give a
brief outline of the first stage of a longitudinal study of two cohorts of
part-time and full-time students on the Legal Practice Course at a new
university in England, (some of whom are now in training with firms)
and representatives of the local legal employment market. A report of
the research results to date will be set in the context of an exploration
of some key theoretical perspectives which inform the field of the
profession and of identity development, such as theories of symbolic,
linguistic, and cultural capital.
INTRODUCTION
This paper reports on research into the reflexive relationship between
professional identity formation at the individual and organizational levels. It
is a commonplace of market control theory that legal professionalism is a
social project, the contours of which are the product of a `dialectical
190
ß2007 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2007 Cardiff University Law School. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
*Department of Law, Leeds Metropolitan University, Vernon Road, Leeds
LS1 3EQ, England
H.Sommerlad@leedsmet.ac.uk
As the study is ongoing, this paper represents a report on the work to date, which was
conducted with the research assistance of Sophie Goodeve, and the help of colleagues
Lisa Geary and Darren Shaw. I would also like to thank Dr. Peter Sanderson, Professor
Richard Moorhead, and several anonymous referees for their insightful comments into an
earlier draft.
relationship with its environment'.
1
This social embeddedness requires us to
view both professional reproduction and the identity formation of the
individual lawyer historically.
2
The linkages between the socio-economic
upheavals of the last thirty years, the profession's constituent role in shaping
the substance of significant dimensions of those upheavals, and its own
transformation or crisis exemplify the enactment of history in cultural
practice.
The crisis the profession has undergone is an aspect of the `painful birth of
a new international order on the ruins of an economic order based on state
intervention'.
3
Lawyers' centrality to the elaboration of the new order, as the
`conceptive ideologists'
4
who `thought' and therefore shaped it in, for
instance, the emerging transnational markets and the `hybridised or privatised
... non-state regimes'
5
characteristic of neo-liberalism, fuelled the exponen-
tial growth of the corporate sector in terms of, for instance, its earnings,
6
geographical reach,
7
and the numbers of lawyers it employed.
For the private client `hemisphere'
8
of the United Kingdom profession,
the impact of the neo-liberal order has been equally dramatic, but generally
less profitable. For instance, the shift away from collective welfare provision
towards a `hollow, excluding model of citizenship' transformed legal aid
from a service which in 1991 was offered by 74 per cent of all law offices
representing 11.1 per cent of the turnover of all solicitors,
9
into one largely
confined to an impoverished rump of the profession. At the same time the
erosion of the `aura of mystery',
10
the related decline in the deference
traditionally accorded the `classical' professions by the lay public, and
corresponding increase in consumer power generated challenges from the
state and outsiders (such as claims adjusters)
11
to both the profession's right
191
1 G. Hanlon, Lawyers, the State and the Market (1999) 3.
2M.Larson. `In the matter of experts and professionals, or how impossible it is to leave
nothing unsaid' in The Formation of the Professions: Knowledge, State and Strategy,
eds. R. Torstendhal and M. Burrage (1990); R. Abel, English Lawyers between
Market and State: the Politics of Professionalism (2003).
3R.Boyer, Capitalismes fin de sie
Ácle (1986).
4M.Cain, `The general practice lawyer and client' (1979) 7 International J. of the
Sociology of Law 333.
5H.Arthurs and R. Kreklewich, `Law, legal institutions and the legal profession in the
New Economy' (1996) 34 Osgoode Hall Law J. 36±8.
6 The output of the legal profession in England and Wales doubled between 1992±2002
to £12.9 bn., representing 1.4 per cent of UK GDP (Legal Services: City Business
Series, International Financial Services (2005)), and the Law Society calculated that
in 2005 gross fees for private practice in England and Wales totalled £16 bn.
7 The corporate sector expanded both domestically, through mergers, and inter-
nationally, acquiring a presence in major world centres through strategic alliances,
joint ventures, and full-blown multi-national partnerships
8J.Heinz and E. Laumann, Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar (1994).
9 Law Society, Annual Statistical Report 1991 (1991) 31.
10 H. Wilensky, `The Professionalisation of everyone' (1964) 70 Am. J. of Sociology 149.
11 Abel. op. cit., n. 2.
ß2007 The Author. Journal Compilation ß2007 Cardiff University Law School
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