Lawyers and Localities: The Interaction of Community Context and Professionalism

Most studies of the legal profession, done in metropolitan settings, have indicated that the profession is characterized by deep divisions associated with varying practice patterns, professional status, and orientation. But the sources of division within the bar include more than the specialization and stratification that are typical of the bar in metropolitan settings. Community context also appears to be a source of division. It determines not only the character of a lawyer's cases and clients but also the manner in which practice is conducted. This comparison of practice patterns in Missouri of rural lawyers with those in a middle-sized city (Springfield) revealed that while the small town context protects the bar from the centrifugal forces of stratification found in larger settings, it also has elements that challenge the professional independence of the practitioner. The small town or rural practitioner is very much a part of the local life, and thus local opinion and values have a salience for practice patterns not typical of larger settings. In addition, these rural lawyers are less likely to be engaged exclusively in law practice.
Overall, the data suggest that the legal profession is divided not only by specialization and its attendant internal stratification but also by the size and character of the local context. In contrast to the view that the profession is a homogeneous professional subculture, we found that the bar may better be thought of as a rather loose-knit group with tenuous collegial ties whose professionalism is under constant challenge from the community in which law practice occurs.     

The Transmission of Legal Precedent Across the Australian State Supreme Courts Over the Twentieth Century

This article considers several possible determinants of the transmission of legal precedent across Australian state supreme courts over the course of the twentieth century. The study finds that that the transmission of legal precedent is higher between State supreme courts that are more physically proximate and between state supreme courts in which a majority of judges in both courts are appointed by conservative governments. The study further finds that having an intermediate trial court and providing appointments to the High Court of Australia are correlated with whether a state is a source of interstate citations or a cue sender.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

Demography and discourse in transition:: Quebec Fertility at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

This article is part of a broader research project which seeks to shed new light on Quebec's fertility decline between the 1850s and the 1950s, notably by breaking down barriers between cultural and economic explanations and between quantitative and qualitative analysis. It explores relationships between demographic trends and the public discourse around reproduction in the province at the turn of the twentieth century. Using a collection of articles selected from French-language periodicals published between 1870 and 1920, the article analyzes the reactions of certain public commentators to the prospect of fertility decline in this traditionally prolific province. They identify a shift in the public discussion of fertility in Quebec during World War I. Pride in and celebration of Quebec's large families was superseded in the dominant nationalist discourse by anxiety about diminished rates of reproduction and natalist exhortations to women who might be tempted to restrict their fertility. After documenting and identifying the reasons for this shift, the article discusses a current of opposition which appeared, if only briefly, in the pages of the controversial liberal weekly, Le Pays.     

重新认识法律职业：律师与社会公益

经过20多年的恢复与重建，我国的律师事业获得了重大发展，各项制度得以确立并逐步走向完善，律师从业人数也初具规模，律师行业的整体素质也有了较大的提高。但是长久以来在中国，作为维护私权、旨在实现其所代理的客户利益的律师，似乎与社会公共利益之间并无关联且相去甚远。然而，这一现象究竟是法律职业的共性还是中国转型期的特性？律师与社会公共利益之间究竟有无联系？从国家与社会公益的视角看，究竟应当怎样看待法律职业？本文拟就这些问题，作初步的探讨。     

法律思维:一种职业主义的视角

关于"法律职业的独特性是由于法律人掌握与众不同的思维方式"的说法是不成立的.是法律职业使那些以适用法律为业的法律家具有不同于普通人的思考问题的方式,是职业决定了法律思维的独特性而不是相反.     

律师流动的法律问题与对策

2004年11月20日,由中国政法大学律师学研究中心、中国律师杂志社联合主办的律师流动法律问题与对策研讨会在京举行。会议围绕律师流动的相关问题进行了十分有意义的研讨。现就有关研讨内容综述如下:第一主题:律师流动:律师事务所的管理与司法行政机关的职责司法部律师公证司副司长周院生认为,应该说我们现在律师队伍的发展是很快的,全国将近11万职业律师,律师事务所从业人员14.6万。这样一个规模,应该说是比较可观的一个规模。他认为在律师的异地融合当中要处理好两个方面的关系:一个是要处理律师的自由流动和市场监管的关系。一方面就是要…     

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。     

Politics and Culture: From the Twentieth Century to the New Millenniumb

In a period in Italy in which the fascist “Ethical State” gave way to a lesser god, the ethical party, culture was transformed into a sort of political pedagogy. Bobbio insisted on the fact that the “first task of intellectuals ought to be to prevent the monopoly of force from becoming the monopoly of truth.” Today the ethical parties have disappeared, along with political pedagogy. Bobbio was aware of the reasons that make participatory democracy difficult: In complex societies citizens are poorly informed judges regarding their own interests; hidden powers condition the visible choices; pluralism borders on corporatism and even on a modern version of feudalism; and, lastly, where mass individualism prevails, perception of the general interest appears increasingly distant and difficult. Consequently, we need a different relationship between culture and politics.     

Nineteenth-Century Lawyers and Railway Capitalism: Historians and the Use of Legal Cases

Abstract

The railway was a key factor in nineteenth-century economic development. R.W. Kostal considered the interaction of the industry with lawyers in his book Law and English Railway Capitalism 1825–1875. Yet his conclusion that the law coped badly with the new industry is vitiated by his failure properly to analyse the way the courts applied legal doctrine. In areas such as preincorporation liability for railway companies’ debts, rating and compulsory purchase, the courts applied well-established principles. Even new law in cases like Priestley v Fowler can only be understood in terms of common law principles.     

The Legal Community: Judges, Lawyers, Officials and Clerks in the Writing of Europe

This article argues that EU legal studies whould pay more attention to the legal discourse that sustains the conceptions of law and legal politics underlying European law. Drawing loosely on Bourdieu's concept of 'legal fields', it offers a social and intellectual reconstruction of European legal thinking by way of empirical analysis of European legal writing. The article argues that the autonomy, technicality and specificity of European law should be seen at least in part as consequences of the social and professional structure of the community of EU laywers.     

State Transformation and the Role of Lawyers: The WTO,India, and Transnational Legal Ordering

This article explains the impact of India's engagement with the law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on both the Indian state and on the WTO itself. In each case, it explains the role of Indian lawyers within the larger transnational context. In engaging with globalization and the WTO, India has transformed itself. The Indian state has moved toward a new developmental state model involving a stronger emphasis on trade, greater government transparency, and the development of public‐private coordination mechanisms in which the government plays a steering role. The analysis shows that it has done so not as an autonomous policy choice, but rather in light of the global context in which the WTO and WTO law form an integral part. Reciprocally, the article displays the ways that India has built legal capacity to attempt to shape the construction, interpretation, and practice of the trade legal order. Indian private lawyers play increasing roles, although they remain on tap, not on top.