It is the worst time in living history to be a law graduate: or is it? Does Australia have too many law graduates?

According to the Australian legal profession and media, law schools are producing too many graduates relative to the number of vacancies within the profession. This claim, however, is hardly new. This paper identifies a number of junctions at which there has been concern about the overproduction of law graduates, showing that this discourse appears during periods of major economic stress. It also shows that until the most recent episode of concern, the perception that there are too many law graduates relative to employment opportunities has not been supported by empirical evidence. In the past, the increasing supply of law graduates has been met with increasing demand. However, the legal profession is now facing unprecedented market competition and restructure, and opportunities in the profession for new graduates have declined. This still does not mean that the law schools are producing too many graduates. The current cohort of graduates is likely to continue into a professional occupation, although not necessarily in private legal practice, and there is a lack of lawyers working in disadvantaged communities.     

Lawyers, Legislation and Social Welfare

Efficiency considerations have played an increasing role in the development of legal doctrine over the last decades. Our paper investigates the consequences of the efficiency doctrine for the long run allocation of human resources between the legal profession and other professional activities. It is argued that a short run pursuit of the efficient scope of legislation may create an inefficient oversupply of lawyers under free entry into the legal profession. Self-regulation of entry into the legal profession by the bar association may provide higher aggregate welfare. Liberalization of professional entry can explain both the expansion of legislative activity and the unprecedented growth rate of the legal profession in many countries.     

法律职业与法律人才培养

法律职业与法学教育之间制度性联系的缺乏 ,一方面导致了法学教育主要局限于高等院校内部法学学科体系的自我完善、自我发展 ,另一方面致使法律职业未能走上职业化的发展轨道 ,存在泛政治化、行政化和大众化的倾向。从事法律职业的人员应当掌握法学学科体系的基本知识 ,具备法律职业的基本素养 ,具备从事这一职业的基本技能。为了使法律人才的培养符合法律职业的基本要求 ,必须从法律职业与法学教育的整体出发 ,结合统一司法考试制度 ,重构法律人才宏观模式。     

A qualitative study of the impact of law clinics on students’ perceptions of emotional labour expectations

The benefits to students of being given some form of clinical legal education are well documented. Research has been conducted in the area of legal education and emotion, emotional intelligence and clinical legal education. There have also been studies which explore emotional labour in the legal profession. However, there is currently no research into the role of clinical legal education in advancing law students’ understanding of emotional labour expectations in the legal profession. This Legal Education Research Network (LERN) funded project aims to fill that gap by examining the contribution law clinics make to the development of law students’ emotion management skills in preparation for entry into the legal profession. The project seeks to achieve this by considering the changes to law students’ perceptions of emotional labour expectations as a result of undertaking this type of clinical legal education. The paper offers insights into the types of emotional labour as well as the perceived drivers of emotional labour, which are regarded as necessary to fulfil the role of the solicitor. The paper will also analyse the potential consequences of performing emotional labour identified by participants.     

The Financial Rewards of Elite Status in the Legal Profession

This article focuses on the role of intergenerational status attainment for legal careers. By decomposing the earnings gap between elite and nonelite lawyers at two points in their careers, we find that inherited cultural capital produces an earnings advantage as soon as lawyers begin their careers and that this gap persists over time. We further find that the processes underlying this gap change as lawyers make their way through the profession. While in early careers, the elite advantage is due to stronger starting endowments, the advantage for junior lawyers results from a more complex process, which combines starting endowments, professional capital gained during the first years of practice, and the rate at which endowments are differentially rewarded in the profession. Elaborating on work that identifies the importance of maintaining and concentrating diverse forms of capital in the legal profession, we explain the process through which elite lawyers gain and retain their advantage over time.     

Law Professors: A Profile of the Teaching Branch of the legal Profession

In the United States, law schools provide the principal route of entry into the legal profession. Indeed, education in a law school is the only experience that virtually all members of the modern legal profession have in common. The gatekeeping function of law schools places the nation's law teachers in a most influential position. Although law professors play a vital role in selecting and molding the members of the profession, little research has been done on them. This article presents the results of the American Bar Foundation's first major study of law teachers. The author finds them to be a most highly credentialed group of lawyers, the overwhelming majority of whom are graduates of a small group of elite law schools. She also finds that possession of a degree from one of these schools appears to be not only highly determinative of who become law teachers but also of the nature of teachers' academic careers.     

Complicating the “holy grail”, simplifying the search: a critique of the conventional problematisation of social immobility in elite legal education and the profession

This article challenges the conventional problematisation of and response to insufficient socio-economic diversity in elite legal education and the legal profession. I contend that the entrenched socio-economic stratification of admissions, the undergraduate experience, final degree classification, and career trajectories turns on elite institutions’ failure to recognise that education and educational proxies neither explain the core of socio-economic inequality nor are they the linchpin for improving social mobility. I draw on a case study of an elite UK university’s undergraduate Law programme. My argument proceeds in three parts. Firstly, I contend that justifiable commitment to “meritocracy” continues to be unjustifiably implemented via the indeterminate critical values of “potential” and “talent”, which undermines the meritocratic aim. Secondly, I explain how the inadequacy of the educational proxies employed for socio-economic disadvantage undermines the ability of targeted responses to achieve real improvements, and I call for the adoption of poverty-based proxies. Thirdly, I suggest that the search for mechanisms to increase diversity proceeds on the mistaken assumption that complex problems require complex solutions, which overlooks the transformative potential of “micro-adjustments” or “nudges”. I propose both universal and targeted micro-adjustments, which focus on fostering a universal diversity of excellence; bringing disadvantaged students within the “community of practice” to become expert in critical learning methods and assessment criteria; and enhancing disadvantaged students’ social and cultural capital.     

Affirmative Action in the Legal Profession

This article examines whether the legal profession should use quotas and decision-making preferences in recruitment and promotion in favour of women, ethnic minorities, and those from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. It argues that this is necessary to eradicate current patterns of discrimination and disadvantage. It also argues that quotas and decision-making preferences do not necessarily conflict with appointment or promotion on merit, and hence that consequent unfairness to other applicants is more apparent than real. Moreover, any potential stigmatization of the beneficiaries of affirmative action is outweighed by the advantages in reversing the under-representation of women, ethnic minorities, and those from socially disadvantaged background, thereby challenging perceptions of their inferior qualities as lawyers. Finally, practical problems in the implementation of affirmative action are considered and argued to be insufficiently serious to stand in the way of its introduction.     

Gendering the Legal Complex: Women in Sri Lanka's Legal Profession

Drawing upon feminist standpoint theory and interviews with pioneering women lawyers in Sri Lanka, I argue for a focus on women as a distinct category in ‘legal complex theory’. I consider the following questions in making this claim. What were the internal structures of the legal profession that the older generations of women lawyers encountered as they entered the profession and as they took up positions of leadership? In what ways, if at all, was the ‘culture(s)’ within the profession patriarchal? In what ways, if any, did the entry and advancement of women impact these internal structures of the profession and its culture(s)? And what can we learn from these experiences in predicting the future trajectory of the legal profession? The analytical expansion that I propose reveals gender-based dynamics within the legal complex, such as gender-stereotyped perceptions about women lawyers within the profession, the ‘feminization’ of the profession, and ‘gender segmentation’ within its different spheres.     

The making of the Canadian legal profession: a hybrid heritage

The Canadian legal profession emerged from the confluence of two distinct traditions: the American and the English. The colonies of British North America followed the pre-revolutionary American model of a unified legal profession, according to which all lawyers could practise as barristers and solicitors. American and Canadian lawyers pursued a client- and market-driven, eclectic type of practice that was receptive to innovations – such as the large law firm, the contingency fee, and university legal education – that were strongly resisted in England. On the governance side, however, Canadian lawyers created an indigenous but English-inflected model whereby professional self-governance was delegated to a statutorily-created body that had the power to compel all lawyers to join if they wished to practise law. With their commitment to client-centred service and strong governance, Canadian lawyers long enjoyed a cooperative and productive relationship with provincial governments, unlike the adversarial one characteristic of the United States or the long benign neglect of the legal professions by the English state. It is argued that this historical pattern may help to explain the continuing strength of the self-governance model in Canada at a time when it is being questioned and radically reformed elsewhere in the common law world.     

Migration and Social Structure: The Spatial Mobility of Chinese Lawyers

This article uses the case of Chinese migrant lawyers to examine how the spatial mobility of individual practitioners shapes the social structure of the profession. Drawing on data from 261 interviews conducted in twelve Chinese provinces during 2004–2010, the 2009 Chinese Legal Environment Survey, lawyer yearbooks, and other public sources, the authors examine the patterns, causes, outcomes, and structural consequences of Chinese lawyers' internal migration. The empirical analysis shows that the spatial mobility of Chinese lawyers has not only increased the stratification and inequality of law practice in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but it has also aggravated the shortage of legal service and intensified interprofessional competition in western and rural China. Based on findings from the Chinese case, the article connects the sociology of law and migration studies and moves toward a new processual theory for understanding the relationship between microlevel mobility and macrolevel stratification in the legal profession.     

Standing for the client: on the interactional becoming of the criminal defence attorney1

In this essay, I explore the meaning of the legal profession (the defence attorney). I carry out my investigation in the interactional register. I suggest that we examine the profession of defence attorney as a professional identity in becoming. I localize the event of becoming in the first attorney-client interview. I propose that it is during the first encounter that the attorney comes to stand for the client as a legal counsel. I further propose that the analogy of ‘standing for’ be accessed empirically through an analysis of a recorded episode from the first attorney-client conference. For my methods I use a combination of frame analysis and conversation analysis. The two analyses show how the attorney becomes to stand for the client as a legal figure moulded in a series of interactional moves. By reformulating and reframing the ordinary talk that is introduced as an entry mode into an institutional relationship, the attorney and the client alter their discursive positions until the attorney assumes his professional identity, that is, becomes to stand for the client in legal action.     

The Legal Profession as Gatekeeper to the Judiciary: Design Faults in Measures to Enhance Diversity

The gate‐keeping role played by the legal profession in the judicial appointments process gives rise to the translation of entrenched group‐based identity hierarchies from legal practice into the judiciary. The relationship between the composition of the legal profession and the judiciary has been almost completely unaffected by recent reforms designed to increase diversity in the composition of the judiciary. This article identifies legal and institutional defects which help to explain the failure to disrupt the reproduction of these patterns of appointment. We identify two particular defects which we call ‘soft target radicalism’ and ‘regulatory bind’ as important factors inhibiting change. We conclude that if the legal profession is to retain its gate‐keeping role, equality law which directly regulates legal practice should be strengthened and the regulatory binds in which the Judicial Appointments Commission and other public entities are caught should be loosened.     

The Human Rights Act and Legal Culture: The Judiciary and the Legal Profession

The purpose of this article is to consider the effect the United Kingdom’s currently prevailing legal culture is likely to have on the realization of cultural change presaged by the Human Rights Act. The article is in five parts. The first two address the preliminary questions: what is meant by ‘legal culture’ for these purposes, and what type of ‘human rights culture’ does the Human Rights Act envisage? The answers define the scope of the remainder of the article’s inquiry into the ways in which the Act itself and the culture of the United Kingdom legal profession and judiciary are likely to interact. The third part of the article identifies some examples of the sorts of culturally specific aspects of current legal practice which are likely to operate as serious practical constraints on the emergence of a human rights culture worthy of the name, before the fourth part considers what sorts of cultural changes will be required of judges and lawyers for the presaged cultural transformation to come about. Finally, the article asks whether there is any reason to believe that courts and lawyers can find from within their present culture the resources to bring about the necessary shift.     

On the Consequences of Defensive Professionalism: Recent Changes in the Legal Labour Process

This study of change in the legal profession argues that governmental policies, combined with economic recession and supply-side considerations, have led to decline in the legal profession's historical performance, and a defensive strategy which preserves the status and earning power of equity partners. Related responses include a drive towards organizational consolidation, a long-term increase in the numbers of salaried solicitors, and fewer non-fee-earning support staff. This involves a shift from external (or occupational) closure regimes, which sanction entry to the profession, to internal (or organizational) mechanisms, which regulate progression through the professional hierarchy. The paper challenges hypotheses of deprofessionalization and managerialization, and lends empirical support to Freidson's continuity thesis whereby reorganization is safeguarding traditional privileges and rewards for certain sections of the profession at the cost of a progressive process of intra-occupational stratification.     

Competition and Cooperation in International Commercial Arbitration: The Birth of a Transnational Legal Profession

This paper revisits the sociology of international commercial arbitration on the basis of unexploited archives and data. This material casts new light on the competition between “grand old men” and “young technocrats” in the 1980s and 1990s, a theme that has structured the analysis of international commercial arbitration since the pioneering work of Yves Dezalay and Bryant G. Garth (Dealing in Virtue). In contrast, the data show that the crucial transformative period actually took place between the 1950s and 1970s, when a relatively well‐defined group of individuals emerged as the leading arbitrators at the International Chamber of Commerce. These individuals— the “secant marginals”—succeeded in constructing a cooperative interface (rather than competition) between otherwise separate legal systems and professions. In doing so, they created the conditions necessary for the emergence of a new transnational legal profession. At a more general level, the article proposes an alternative narrative of globalization, wherein actors operating at the intersection of various systems, create new arenas of governance on the basis of inter‐system cooperation.     

数据跨境流动规制中的“长臂管辖”——对欧盟GDPR的原旨主义考察

欧盟《一般数据保护条例》是个人数据保护的重要立法之一,而其中的“长臂管辖”条款是最有特色并颇受争议的规则。从内在视角来看,欧盟语境下个人数据的特殊含义和重要地位,是“长臂管辖”的正当性基础。而其在制度上形成内外联动的局面,是因为欧盟想扭转其在全球互联网和信息产业的劣势地位,并增强其在全球数据保护立法的话语权,同时更好地保护个人数据和国家安全。对此,中国未来的数据保护立法应结合自身数据产业的特点,明确立法旨意,形成内外联动,在国际互联网和数据治理中采取积极有为的态度,掌握该领域的话语权。     

The “age of empire”: again?

Law and ways of thinking about law have historically been integral to processes of colonialisation and extension of empire. Contemporary forms of colonialism in a globalising legal environment may be less obvious, more nuances or even subconscious. However, the emergence of higher education as a trade commodity, the shift to fee-paying students as consumers and the market competition for international students among universities raise questions about the export and import of various forms of legal education, especially in the context of plural and mixed legal systems, debates about legal transplants, and concerns about legal imperialism. This article examines these issues and considers the place of comparative legal education in the contemporary environment facing university law schools.     

The Political Economy of Canadian Legal Education

The political economy of Canadian legal education is characterized by conflicts over resources, values, and interests. These conflicts manifest themselves in divergences between faculty and students over issues of law school governance and politics, in the sometimes incompatible demands placed upon law schools by the legal profession and the university, in the intramural politics of class, race, and gender, and in rivalry among competing bodies of legal knowledge. Most importantly, the New Economy is reshaping legal education because the restructuring of CanadaÕs society, economy, and polity is undermining the position and power of both the universities and the profession.