Lawyers and Politics in France, 1814–1950: The State, the Market, and the Public

Throughout the 19th century, lawyers in France were deeply involved in political action to pursue an overriding goal–to become recognized as spokesmen for the public. This strategy governed their history; it explains their brilliant social ascent and their subsequent slow decline. As long as the conflict between state and civil society raged, lawyers were able to we assets–political mobilization, the power of the word, the esteem enjoyed by law–which had allowed them faithfully to embody public opinion in its struggle to limit state powers. From this embodiment of public ideals they derived independence, prestige, and a dominant position in the state. But when the nature of the political regime ceased to be a bone of contention and when public life became organized around other cleavages, lawyers were gradually deprived of their representative function. This marked the beginning of a social decline that became visible between the two world wars and lasted until the 1950s.     

论律师的职业属性

关于律师的职业属性问题,各国《律师法》有不同的表述。我国对律师性质的立法界定,经历了从“国家的法律工作者”到“依法取得执业证书,为社会提供法律服务的执业人员”的认识过程。在《律师法》中准确界定律师的职业属性,是科学安排律师制度、合理设计律师行业发展的前提。值此《律师法》修改之际,本刊特邀请几位专家学者就律师的职业属性问题进行了一次笔谈:     

法律职业化与职业化的律师性格

中国律师职业化过程中形成的律师性格中的独立性与依附性、自信性与自卑性、稳重性与浮华性、诚实性与唯利性的性格矛盾严重影响了律师的职业形象 ,也不利于中国的法律职业化进程。要从根本上改造律师性格 ,必须通过提高司法准入门槛、完善司法考试制度、建立科学的律师工作质量评估制度和独立自治的律师协会制度来保证。     

中国律师的职业定位

律师职业是现代法治的必备元素,独立而完善的律师阶层以保障民权、制衡公权为己任。职业化使得中国律师走向独立,这同时又是去行政化的过程。商业化因素在这一过程中起着不容忽视的正面和负面作用,应当施以公允的评价并进行一定的控制。在忠诚的前提下,律师对于委托人亦应当保持必要的独立。考量中国司法制度运行的现状,律师如何保持同公、检、法三机关的独立是一个亟待解决的问题。     

Anatomy of a Counter-Bar Association: The Chicago Council of Lawyers

There have been few successful attempts in the history of the organized bar since 1870 to establish alternative bar groups that challenge the dominance of the large comprehensive local and state bar associations over the representation of lawyers' interests. Founded in 1969, a product of the social ferment of the 1960s, the Chicago Council of Lawyers provides an example of one such attempt. This paper examines the conditions under which a reform-oriented counter-bar association is likely to arise, the factors that permitted its successful establishment in Chicago, and the functions it serves within the legal profession as an alternative to the Chicago Bar Association.
While the violence surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago may have sparked the formation of an alternative bar association, it was intraprofessional matters that deeply concerned the founders of the Council particularly the performance of the organized bar in providing legal services to the poor and in improving the quality of the judiciary. Within the legal profession itself there was also a striking disjunction between the age of the leadership of the bar and of the numerous young lawyers who flooded in-to the bar in the 1960s. Preexisting networks of young activist lawyers greatly facilitated organizational formation.
As a reformist group with a small and relatively homogeneous membership, and lacking strong ties to powerful institutions, the Council can afford to take strong stances on controversial issues. By aggressively supporting positions at odds with those of the more established bar associations, and thus providing the media, the public, and legislators with an alternative viewpoint, the Council contributes to shattering the myth of a unified profession and to the demystification of professional authority.     

青年律师职业倦怠及其应对策略研究

律师起源于古罗马。其自一出现至今，一直定位于一种服务性的角色。在我国，于2008年6月1日施行的《中华人民共和国律师法》第二条载明：律师是为当事人提供法律服务的执业人员。青年律师作为这支服务性执业队伍的生力军，是律师队伍发展的希望之所在。     

Tunisia's “Revolutionary” Lawyers: From Professional Autonomy to Political Mobilization

On January 14, 2011, after twenty‐three years in power and one month of popular protest demanding his resignation, President Ben Ali fled Tunisia. Lawyers, wearing their official robes, had marched frequently in the uprising's demonstrations. By engaging with and supporting the uprising, lawyers—both the profession in general and the bar's leadership—gained considerable symbolic influence over the post‐uprising government that replaced Ben Ali's regime. This article outlines the various forms of political lawyering undertaken by Tunisian lawyers and their professional associations from Tunisia's independence to post‐uprising transitions. We demonstrate that economic concerns, professional objectives, and civic professionalism contributed to the collective action of Tunisian lawyers before and after the uprising. Tunisian lawyers moved beyond the realm of their profession to adopt a role as overseers of the post‐uprising government.     

客户影响与职业主义的相对性：中国精英商务律师的工作

本文是一项关于精英商务律师的职业工作如何被来自不同类型客户的影响所建构的研究。文中所运用的数据,包括对中国六个精英商务律师事务所的24名律师的访谈和作者在其中一个事务所进行的参与观察。对于这些中国精英商务律师事务所而言,外企、国企和民企构成了他们极度多样化的客户类型。相应的,律师的工作变得具有灵活性和适应性,以满足客户的不同要求。同时,客户对于律师职业工作的影响也取决于商务律师事务所里的劳动分工:合伙人对于诊断、推理和治疗的过程具有牢固的控制,因此他们享受着高度的职业自主性,而非合伙律师在其工作场所内基本上被剥夺了这一文化系统,因此.他们的工作就很容易受到客户的影响。于是,客户对于职业工作的影响显现出随着律师的资历加深而逐渐下降的趋势。     

Client Influence and the Contingency of Professionalism: The Work of Elite Corporate Lawyers in China

This study examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Accordingly, lawyers' work becomes flexible and adaptive to accommodate the different demands of the clients. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. As a result, client influence on professional work appears to decrease with a lawyer's seniority.     

Views from the Front lines: Observations by Chicago Lawyers About the System of Civil Discovery

This is the first in a series of articles that will report the results of a pilot effort to assess how well the system of civil discovery is working and to identify the principal problems which burden that system. The study revolves around interviews with 180 Chicago area litigators. This first essay, which synthesizes observations, insights, and complaints by interviewed attorneys, suggests that the world of civil discovery is not one monolithic whole, but consists of subworlds which exhibit clearly distinguishable features and problems. In addition to describing the principal problems which afflict the discovery system in its two major subworlds, the author reports what the interviewed lawyers suggest are the primary causes of those problems. While the litigators identify many ways in which the character of lawyering encumbers and disrupts the discovery process, they also locate much of the blame for the system's problems in the behavior of judges and the inefficiency of the judicial machinery. The interviews produced a dramatically widespread appeal to the courts to increase use of sanctions as a means of restraining discovery abuse.     

Mechanisms and Consequences of Professional Marginality: The Case of Poverty Lawyers Revisited

A partial replication of Jack Katz's (1982 ) Poor People's Lawyers in Transition, this article explores the manifestations and consequences of professional marginality of legal aid lawyers. Based on thirty‐five interviews with poverty attorneys and interns in Chicago, the authors show that scarce material resources and unclear expectations continue to give rise to the marginalization of this segment of the legal profession. The authors analyzed ideological, task, status, and material dimensions of attorneys' professional marginality. With no access to reform litigation, central to the legal aid “culture of significance” in the 1970s, present‐day poverty lawyers seek new ways to cope with marginality. The authors argue that these lawyers' coping strategies have many negative consequences. Thus, over time, poverty lawyers' deep engagement with clients, ideals of empowerment, and social justice orientation give way to emotional detachment, complacency, and an emphasis on “making do” within the constraints of the system.     

Guardians at the Gate: The Backgrounds, Career Paths, and Professional Development of Private US Immigration Lawyers

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of seventy-one New York immigration lawyers who are engaged in private practice. It focuses on the lawyers' backgrounds, career paths, and early professional training and describes, inter alia, the unusual diversity of this bar, the lawyers' reasons for practicing immigration law, the ways in which they learn to practice law, and the strong sense of community within the private immigration bar. It uses the idea of communities of practice to help understand how lawyers learn from their colleagues and are influenced by them. The article identifies several factors that may contribute to the supportiveness of the bar and the strong sense of community within that practice specialty, notwithstanding its great diversity. It concludes by making some preliminary comparisons between immigration lawyers and lawyers in other practice specialties and by identifying some questions for future study.     

The Meaning of Pro Bono: Institutional Variations in Professional Obligations among Lawyers

Recent data on lawyer participation in pro bono have suggested that such work flows from the intrinsic value one derives from volunteering as well as from workplace characteristics of those who provide pro bono service. This finding would imply that pro bono emerges not merely from individual personality traits but that the workplace environment structures motives and incentives for pro bono work. Such a finding points to a need to disentangle the effects of diverse workplace settings on the construction of different vocabularies of motive for engaging in pro bono work. In this article I employ an institutional framework to examine the impact of the workplace environment on participation in pro bono work among lawyers. Survey data were collected from 474 lawyers who graduated from three law schools that have mandatory pro bono requirements. Results indicate that lawyers' meanings of pro bono as well as their motivations for doing such work and the benefits they attribute to such work vary across workplace settings. These results are discussed in relation to institutional theory.