Professionalization as Status Adaptation: The Nobility, the Bureaucracy, and the Modernization of the Legal Profession in Finland

In contrast to Anglo-American lines of professional development, the central agent of professionalization in many Continental countries was the state bureaucracy. However, this article proposes that an understanding of the class structure of traditional society is also needed to explain the privileged position of lawyers. An historical study of lawyers in the 19th century, after Finland was annexed by Russia, demonstrates that the legal profession provided the nobility an important medium of adaptation to the new society. The importance of the legal profession initially to the state bureaucracy, and subsequently to the nobility, explains its social prominence and its future development. An analysis of the position and needs of the prominent classes in the society of Old Regimes may constitute a fruitful viewpoint in the study of early professionalization in the Continental context more generally.