legal profession

Introduction

      vocation that is based on expertise in the law and in its applications. Although there are other ways of defining the profession, this simple definition may be best, despite the fact that in some countries there are several professions and even some occupations (e.g., police service) that require such expertise but that may not regarded as within the “legal profession.”

History

      Distinct legal systems emerged relatively early in history, but legal professions of size and importance are relatively modern. There is not the slightest trace in ancient times of a distinct legal profession in the modern sense. The earliest known legal specialist was the judge, and he was only a part-time specialist. The chief, prince, or king of small societies discharged the judicial function as part of the general role of political leader. As his power spread, he delegated the function, though not to legal specialists; in the secular stages of the early systems, legal duties were taken over by royal officials who were “generalists.” In the wake of powerful religious or quasi-religious movements, priests or wise men often judged or advised the judges. It may be that in some of these cases specialized legal aid to the ordinary citizen did exist, but at levels of social status below the notice of chroniclers or tomb inscriptions and perhaps without benefit of official approval.

Classical beginnings

      A distinct class of legal specialists other than judges first emerged in Greco-Roman (Roman law) civilization, and, as with the law itself, the main contribution was from Rome in the period from 200 BC to AD 600. In the early stages of both Greece and Rome, as later among the German (Germanic law) tribes who overran the Roman Empire, there was a prejudice against the idea of specialists in law being generally available for a fee. The assumption was that the citizen knew the customary law and would apply it in transactions or in litigation personally with advice from kinsmen. As the law became more complex, men prominent in public life—usually patricians—found it necessary to acquire legal knowledge, and some acquired reputations as experts. Often they spent periods serving as magistrates and in Rome as priests of the official religion, having special powers in matters of family law. Among the German tribes, noble experts were allowed to assist in litigation, not in a partisan fashion but as interpreters (Vorsprecher) for those who wished to present a case but felt uncomfortable doing so themselves. The peculiar system of development of early Roman law, by annual edict and by the extension of trial formulas, gave the Roman patrician legal expert an influential position. He became the jurisconsult, the first nonofficial lawyer to be regarded with social approbation, but he owed this partly to the fact that he did not attempt to act as an advocate at trial—a function left to the separate class of orators—and was prohibited from receiving fees.

      The modern legal professional, earning his living by fee-paid legal services, first became clearly visible in the late Roman Empire, when the fiction that a jurisconsult received only gifts was abandoned and when at the same time the permissible fees were regulated. Changes in the methods of trial and other legal developments caused the jurisconsult to disappear in time. The orator (oratory), who now was required to obtain legal training, became the advocate. A subordinate legal agent of the classical system, the procurator, who attended to the formal aspects of litigation, took on added importance because later imperial legal procedure depended largely on written documents that the procurators produced. The jurisconsults had been important as teachers and writers on law; with their decline this function passed to government-conducted law schools at Rome, Constantinople, and Berytus (now Beirut) and to their salaried professors. There was also a humbler class of paid legal documentary experts, the tabelliones, who were useful in nonlitigious transactions.

Medieval Europe

      This late Roman pattern of legal organization profoundly influenced the Europe that began to arise from AD 1000 after the barbarian invasions; even during the invasions the methods of Roman (Roman Catholicism) imperial administration never ceased to be used in some parts of southern France and in central Italy. The Christian (Christianity) church, which became the official Roman imperial church after AD 381, developed its own canon law, courts, and practitioners and followed the general outline of later Roman legal organization. Because of its success among the invaders, the church was in a position to establish its jurisdiction in many matters of family law and inheritance. Hence, both the idea of a legal profession and the method of its operation retained sufficient force to offset Germanic and feudal objections to legal representation. After the revival of learning in the 12th century, in particular the renewed study of Roman law at Bologna, the influence of the late Roman professional system was greatly strengthened.

      From then on, every country in continental Europe acquired, by various stages and with numerous local variations, a legal profession in which four main constituents could be observed. Procurators attended to the formal and especially the documentary steps in litigation. Advocates (advocate), who usually were university graduates in Romanist learning, gave direct advice to clients and to procurators and presented oral arguments in court. Among a miscellany of legal scribes, the notaries (notary) acquired importance because, in addition to being drafting experts, they also authenticated documents and maintained archives. University teachers of law took over the main task of explaining and adapting the mixture of Roman law and Germanic custom that produced the modern laws of the major European countries and continued to dominate in the scholarly interpretation of the law even after the 19th-century codifications. The relative importance of these classes varied enormously from place to place and from century to century. At times the teaching doctors almost supplanted the advocates; in some courts the procurators swallowed up the advocates, and in others the converse occurred; only the notaries managed to survive with little change.

England after the Conquest

      England after the Norman Conquest of 1066 also was influenced by Roman example, and the clerics who staffed the Norman and Plantagenet monarchies and who provided the earliest of their judges enabled the notion of a legal profession, and especially of litigious representation, to be accepted. Only in the ecclesiastical and admiralty courts, however, did procurators (proctors (proctor)) and doctors of the civil and canon laws become established as practitioners. The native “ common law” was developed by a specialized legal society, the Inns of Court, in London; there, through lectures and apprenticeship, men acquired admission to practice before the royal courts. More particularly, they could become serjeants—the most dignified of the advocates, from whom alone after about 1300 the royal judges were appointed. Various agents for litigation resembling procurators also became known. The “attorneys,” authorized by legislation, at first shared the life of the Inns with the “apprentices” in advocacy, who themselves in time acquired the title of barrister. Indeed, there were cases of men working as both barristers and attorneys. When in the 16th century the Court of Chancery (Chancery, Court of) was established as the dispenser of “ equity,” the appropriate agent for litigation was called a solicitor, but the common-law serjeants and barristers secured the right of advocacy in that court. It was not until the 17th century that the attorneys and solicitors were expelled from the Inns and the division between advocate and attorney became rigid, and not until the 18th century did the barristers accept a rule that they would function only upon being engaged by an attorney—not upon being retained directly by a client. Other types of legal agents also developed in England, but in the 19th century all of the nonbarristers were brought under the one name, solicitor. The order of serjeants was eliminated, leaving only barristers, of whom the most senior could be made Queen's (or King's) Counsel.

      In its final development the English legal profession thus bore a resemblance to the European professions—particularly to that of northern France, where the parlements (Parlement) (courts) had a corporate life and apprentice training not unlike that of the Inns. But there were four significant differences between England and the Continent. No distinct class of university teachers and commentators on the national law developed in England. Development of the law took place chiefly through precedent based on the reported judgments of the courts, rather than through legislation. The continental monarchies also developed a system of career judicial office, in which the young university licentiate went straight into government service, whereas in England appointment of judges from the senior practicing profession remained the settled practice. In addition, the division between barristers and solicitors ultimately became much more rigid in England than did the division between the advocate and procurator on the Continent, which never adopted an equivalent of the English practice of requiring a barrister to be employed by a solicitor; both the procurator and the advocate were separately and directly employed by the client. Finally, England never developed the profession of notary, so that the whole burden of transactional work fell on those who are now the solicitors, with legal advice from the bar.

Worldwide legal profession

      Contrary to conventional understanding, there were antecedents of a legal profession outside Europe prior to the spreading of such ideas through European colonialism. In China, for example, there was a long history of unofficial legal advisers—often young men preparing to take imperial examinations for official appointment—who assisted merchants and other laymen in the preparation of legal documents, including those needed to commence litigation. Although operating in the shadow of an imperial legal code that prohibited the instigation of litigation, these quasi-lawyers also enjoyed a fair measure of tolerance from officialdom, which suggests that at least some of them may have served a useful purpose.

      Such indigenous developments notwithstanding, the rise outside Europe of a modern legal profession—in the sense of a class of specialists recognized by the state and yet operating with some measure of independence from it—is generally associated with European colonial expansion. In Britain's North American colonies, and particularly in the United States soon after independence, lawyers assumed a prominent role in both public and private life, which led the French social observer Alexis de Tocqueville (Tocqueville, Alexis de) to write early in the 19th century that “it is at the bar or bench that the American aristocracy is found.” The English system also provided a model for most former English colonies in Africa, for most of the Indian subcontinent, and for Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore. The Romano-Germanic practices that in time became the civil law made their influence felt in Scandinavia, eastern Europe, Latin America, and many Muslim countries in the Middle East; in French, Spanish, Belgian, and Portuguese colonies in Africa; and in Japan, Thailand, the French colonies of Southeast Asia, and, in some measure, the Republic of China (Chinese law) (which existed on the Chinese mainland prior to 1949 and today exists on Taiwan). It should be noted, however, that the association between the modern legal profession and colonialism was not always felicitous. Although lawyers were in some instances at the forefront of their countries' independence movements (as were Mohandas Gandhi (Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand) in India and Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore), in other cases they worked to uphold colonial rule.

      To be sure, both the common-law and the civil-law models of lawyering underwent considerable modification by both the countries of export and the countries of reception. In particular, the specialization of procurator-advocate and solicitor-barrister tended to be replaced by a “fused” profession of legal practitioners qualified to perform both functions and usually doing so. Such a fusion occurred gradually in Germany between the 16th and 18th centuries, and it has taken place more recently in France (except before the courts of appeal). Although the division still formally exists in Italy, it is no longer of practical importance. In Latin America the fused profession is general. Notaries as a separate specialized branch of the profession exist, however, in most civil-law countries.

Characteristics of the profession

Social role

      The legal profession has always had an ambiguous social position. Leading lawyers have usually been socially prominent and respected—the sections of the profession so favoured varying with the general structure of the law in the particular community. The family status of early Roman jurisconsults may have been more important than their legal expertise in securing such a position, but by the time of the principate it was their legal eminence that made them respected. The English serjeants lived magnificently, especially in Elizabethan times, and the French Ordre des Avocats was established (14th century) by feudal aristocrats in circumstances reminiscent of early Rome—including an insistence on receiving gifts rather than fees. The early Italian doctors of civil and canon law (12th–15th centuries) were revered throughout Europe. In England and the countries influenced by its system, the highest prestige gradually came to be conferred on the judges rather than on the order of serjeants, of which the judges were members; even now, the judges of high-level courts in liberal-democratic common-law countries tend to enjoy appreciably greater respect than their brethren at the bar. In the Romano-Germanic systems it is the notaries and the advocates who have come to be most trusted or admired, the judiciary being more closely identified with the civil service.

      Yet, along with this high repute, sustained over two millennia, lawyers have also engendered tremendous distrust and even hatred in many societies. In a few cases this has been the consequence of a general hostility to the whole idea of law. In the Soviet (Soviet law) Union, for example, the early leaders (1917–22) imagined that law and lawyers were the instruments of the ruling classes and that law would soon wither away in classless communism (see Soviet law). This belief was revived during the first three decades of communist rule in China, especially during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Further experience persuaded these governments that there was room for “socialist legality” and for lawyers to serve it. Indeed, since 1977 China has pursued the most ambitious program in history to develop a legal profession, though the legacy of the earlier era still makes itself felt in subtle ways.

      There is an inherent conservatism to the legal profession, owing to its commitment to working chiefly through existing institutions and to the fact that law itself is predominantly intended to satisfy expectations arising from inherited patterns of behaviour. Individual lawyers, nevertheless, occasionally have been on the side of revolutionaries and rebels; Robespierre (Robespierre, Maximilien de) and Lenin were both lawyers, to cite two extreme cases. In addition, there is a long and rich tradition in many countries of lawyers' serving as leaders of struggles for social justice, as did Gandhi, Thurgood Marshall (Marshall, Thurgood) in the United States, and Nelson Mandela (Mandela, Nelson) in South Africa. The prevailing attitude of the legal profession, however, is one of moderation. Thus, many lawyers took the British side in the American Revolution, and, even among the lawyers who took the other side, the predominant influence was against any attempt to turn the political revolution into a socioeconomic revolution.

      Along with these ideological and political reasons for popular distrust, and even more deep-seated, are the inherent difficulties associated with law and with some legal functions. Many people would like law to be so clear that its application is equally certain in all cases and so simple that any person of sense can readily see how it applies. But in a discipline sharing the imperfection and complexity of society itself, no such situation is attainable, and lawyers are consequently blamed for the basic difficulty of their craft—which, it must be said, they sometimes compound by multiplying obscurities, contradictions, and complexities. The legal function likely to be most distrusted by the average person—though it also produces some of the law's heroes—is litigious advocacy, particularly in the criminal law. Plato and Aristotle condemned the advocate as one who was paid to make the worse cause appear the better or who endeavoured by sophisticated tricks of argument to establish as true what any person of common sense could see was false. The feeling against advocacy in the criminal law was so strong that, at least in cases involving more serious kinds of crime, a right to representation by a trained advocate was nowhere generally recognized until the 18th century.

      The organized legal profession has in some jurisdictions endeavoured to meet the problem of litigious advocacy by contending that the dominant duty of the advocate is not to the client but to the truth and the law. Since the late Roman Empire, advocates in many countries have been required to take oaths to this effect, and lawyers have often technically been classed as “officers of court.” The duty of the advocate, so conceived, is to fight for the rights of his client, but only up to the point where an honourable person could fairly put the case on his own behalf. Others have agreed that, particularly in a highly adversarial legal system such as that of the United States, lawyers are obliged to advocate zealously for their clients, even if they disagree with the client's position or views, provided that they neither misrepresent the law nor misstate the facts (see legal ethics).

Private practice

      Client-directed lawyers often are called counselors, but in the original sense of that word—giving advice as to how the law stands—this is rarely an independent function; it is an inseparable part of other functions. In his client-directed activities the lawyer is concerned with how the law affects specific circumstances, which can for convenience be divided into two main types: transactional (commercial transaction) and litigious.

      In the transactional type the lawyer is concerned with the validity or legal efficacy of a transaction independent of any immediate concern with the outcome of litigation. In most countries such activities constitute the largest area of lawyerly activity, whether considered with respect to the number of lawyers involved, the time spent on the task, or the number of clients affected. If the events constituting the transaction in question happen before the lawyer is consulted, he can only advise on their legal significance and perhaps suggest methods of overcoming legal deficiencies in what has been done. If future conduct is involved, he is better placed to help his client plan a course of action that will achieve the desired outcome in the most economical fashion that the law permits and in a manner that minimizes the chances of future litigation.

      Transactions may concern words and acts, but characteristically they require the drafting of documents. In the Romano-Germanic systems these often require notarization. Typical activities falling in this category today include the following: transferring interests in land; transmitting property on death; settling property within a family; making an agreement (especially a commercial agreement of some complexity and duration); incorporating or dissolving a corporate entity; varying the terms on which a corporate entity is conducted (classes of shares, managerial rights, distribution of profits, etc.); and adjusting the ownership and control of property and income to comply with the requirements of taxation laws and minimize their impact on the property and income in question, to ensure the proper management of the assets and distribution of the proceeds among beneficiaries (as in estate planning), or both. In the Romano-Germanic systems many of these functions are discharged by notaries, and in the English and similar divided systems they are performed by solicitors, though in difficult situations the opinions of advocates or barristers may be obtained. In the fused professions of North America, some firms of attorneys, or departments within firms, specialize in business of this type and avoid, so far as they can, the litigious function.

      The litigious function is subdivided into three main stages. First is the preparation of the case: interviewing the client and investigating the circumstances on the basis of leads provided by the client, attending to the formal requirements of the procedure in question—which may involve writs, summonses, and statements of claim or defense—and preparing for trial. Second is the trial proper, in which the facts and law are established and argued before the judge and a decision is made. Third is the execution of the judgment—payment of damages, delivery of property, or performance of obligation in civil cases; payment of fine or imprisonment, etc., in criminal cases. Similar stages arise on appeal. In the divided professions the sharing of these functions is intricate and varies between one system and another. The advocate or barrister is especially responsible for the second stage, but he may advise upon or draft many of the documents used in other stages. If incidental disputes concerning procedure have to be litigated, he is likely to conduct the proceedings; and, if the procedure includes a pretrial conference, he is likely to represent the client. Otherwise, the first and third stages are mainly the province of the procurator or solicitor.

Public-directed practice

      Many law graduates choose to enter public service rather than private practice. Of the public roles played by members of the legal profession, that of judge is most visible, but the status of judge and the mode of entry into this branch of the profession vary considerably from country to country.

      The traditional independence, power, creativity, and prestige of the Anglo-American judge contrast with the status of most Continental judges, which is more akin to that of civil servants (civil service), especially at lower levels of the judiciary. In the countries of Anglo-American influence, at least until recently, appointment (or, in some U.S. states, election) to a judgeship has been viewed as the crowning achievement of a long and often distinguished legal career. In the Continental countries, by contrast, a law graduate who wishes to be a judge merely completes a training period and passes an examination to get a job deciding cases. The beginning civil-law judge can expect to start at the lowest level and, like any other civil servant, to rise in the hierarchy through a series of promotions (though a modest number of positions on the highest courts are reserved for distinguished practitioners or professors as well as for career civil servants). Lateral entry into the judiciary at any level is uncommon. It has frequently been observed that, because of their standardized training, civil-law judges tend to share a common outlook. Moreover, because of their concerns about advancement, they tend to adopt a civil-service mentality that may appear, at least from an Anglo-American perspective, to discourage initiative and independence. Any tendency toward judicial individualism is apt to be further inhibited by the fact that Continental judges, even at the lowest levels, usually sit in panels and typically present their decisions in unsigned opinions. Except in a few courts, such as the German Federal Constitutional Court, disagreement among judges is generally not revealed, either in the form of a dissenting opinion or in a record of the judges' votes.

      Since the late 20th century, however, the contrast between Continental and Anglo-American judicial roles has diminished. In the United States the prestige of judgeships, except at the higher levels, has declined somewhat. It is not as unusual as it once was for judges to resign and return to private practice or for eminent lawyers to decline to be considered for judicial positions; relatively low judicial salaries and public scrutiny are often mentioned as key reasons. Meanwhile, in some Continental countries, such as Germany—as well as in other countries with similar systems, including South Korea (Korea, South) and Japan—judges are recruited from among the best law graduates and sometimes from among experienced practitioners. Because of their special training, Continental judges are almost uniformly professional and competent.

      Governments have always required legal specialists, and the scope for such employment today is enormous. Most countries have a senior political officer—minister of justice, attorney general, solicitor general—who by convention needs to be a lawyer, and a department concerned mainly with the legal problems of the government as client (in the English-derived systems usually the office of the attorney general). Increasingly, however, the great departments of state need their own legal subbranch. In some countries, such as Germany, lawyers dominate the higher offices in the civil service, while in others, such as Japan and France, the various official bureaus are more likely to be staffed, respectively, by law graduates not admitted to practice or by nonlawyers who have been trained in a special school of administration. In the formerly socialist countries of eastern Europe, most lawyers tended to work for government or for collectivized industrial and farm organizations.

      One of the oldest and still most difficult of governmental legal functions is that of prosecutor. Prosecution is sometimes in part carried on by private persons acting through private lawyers, but the recent trend has very much been to concentrate the function in government legal officers. In most Commonwealth countries the crown, or public, prosecutor is a specialized officer under the general control of the attorney general. England has an independent “director of public prosecutions” concerned only with the most serious types of crime, but most prosecutions have been conducted by private barristers (barrister) briefed by him or by the police. A 1985 law, however, provided for the establishment of a body of official prosecutors similar to the public prosecutors (procurators fiscal) of the Scottish system. In the United States this function has come to be mainly local, and prosecutors, whose most common title is district attorney, are elected for short terms.

      In most civil-law systems prosecuting is a career service. In Italy and France the prosecutor is a member of the judiciary. Both prosecutors and judges receive the same training, and both may move from one role to the other in the course of their advancement in the civil service. In Germany, although the prosecutor is not technically a member of the judiciary, he is not strictly separate from it, and individuals move easily from one position to the other. In China considerable effort has been made in recent years to distinguish the functions of judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel, but these roles remain in an early stage of development.

      The prosecuting function is particularly delicate because criminal prosecution can be used as an instrument of oppression and persecution, even where conviction is not obtained, and because in most systems prosecutors are expected to act with a degree of fairness and restraint not necessarily expected of the parties to civil litigation. Many Romano-Germanic systems employ officers who supervise the working of the courts, especially their criminal jurisdiction. This is the office of the “prosecutor general,” or “officer of justice”; a similar service existed in most of the socialist countries of eastern Europe.

      Another branch of government, the legislature, usually requires legal assistance. Legislation needs to be expressed in language readily comprehensible by judges and lawyers and to be framed in harmony with the existing body of law. This requires the service of parliamentary draftsmen who are expert lawyers. A further specialized branch of advisory activity associated with legislation has become prominent—the law-reform commission or committee.

Teaching and scholarship

      Since Roman times teaching and scholarship in the law have provided prominent roles in the legal profession. Until the 18th century, teaching of the English common law was vested exclusively in the Inns of Court, and a good deal of continental European teaching for professional practice—particularly in the case of notaries and procurators—was also professionally organized. Even university law teaching in Europe often involved interchange between practitioner and teacher, exemplified in such great figures as the French 18th-century teacher, advocate, and judge Robert Joseph Pothier, whose commentaries provided the foundation for the Napoleonic Code of civil law. Much law teaching in the new university law schools that sprang up in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Commonwealth in the 19th and 20th centuries was initially carried on part-time by attorneys, barristers, and judges, and some still is. Sir William Blackstone (Blackstone, Sir William), the first holder of a chair of English law—the Vinerian professorship at Oxford—came from the bar and became a judge. Only in the 20th century did law teaching become a distinct, full-time profession, and then to a greater extent in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada than in many civil-law countries.

      Teachers and practitioners in all countries contribute to a vast professional literature, comprising textbooks, practical manuals, theoretical monographs, and a periodical literature whose bulk is becoming almost as big a problem as the enormous number of reported judicial decisions that are consulted for guidance and precedent. Fortunately, the development of sophisticated computerized legal-information services and the Internet have greatly facilitated access to this literature, though they arguably contribute to what has been described as an excess of data. Civil-law judges have traditionally paid close attention to the views of legal scholars as expressed in general and specialized treatises, commentaries on the codes, monographs, law review articles and case notes, and expert opinions rendered in connection with litigation, though some commentators have suggested that the role of jurists is diminishing as law practice and the academy change, especially on the European continent. Persistent scholarly criticism often prompts reexamination of a legal doctrine and sometimes even leads to the abandonment of an established judicial position. In the Anglo-American systems, legal writing has certainly become influential, as indicated by the increase in citations to secondary sources in contemporary judicial opinions. Nonetheless, the degree of deference to academic opinion is in general appreciably less than in the Continental countries.

Autonomy and control

The bench's independence

      At least since classical Greece, a recurring political theme has been the need for a government of laws rather than of men. Actually, however, as the 20th-century English legal philosopher Julius Stone observed, society of necessity has a government both of laws and of men, and the demand for legal autonomy is often seen in practice as a demand for freedom of the lawyers from undue political influence. The demand for autonomy has been expressed mainly in terms of the independence of the judiciary; democracies (democracy) in particular have been assiduous in cultivating both a spirit and traditions that respect judicial independence. The details of their governmental structure or constitutional guarantees tend in that direction, offering obstacles to the ready dismissal of judges, charging their salaries on consolidated revenue, and prohibiting the vesting of judicial functions other than in duly constituted courts of law.

      The special position of the judiciary in constitutional states is usually considered to be an aspect of the separation of powers (powers, separation of), but it also should be considered in its relation to the structure of the legal profession. Since the late Roman Empire, admission to the practice of law and the regulation of the practicing profession have been habitually vested in the judiciary. Furthermore, the duty to speak fearlessly for his client has often required courage of the advocate in the face of political threats, and, when these threats were directed also against the court before which the advocate appeared, judicial courage also was required. The legal profession as a whole is then seen as defending “the rule of law” against the political regime.

      The issue of judicial independence may sometimes, however, be seen in the context of the tension between judges and advocates. In the civil-law systems judges often are subject to a strong corporate discipline within their own craft, and differences can occur between them and the body of advocates and also between them and the university teacher-commentators. These differences may relate to questions of legal ethics, especially the limits of advocate identification with client, or to questions of legal doctrine; the judges are then apt to be considered as representing “the state,” and the advocates and teachers the autonomy of the law. In the English-derived systems judges are much less subject to corporate discipline, and disputes with the bar are more likely to arise with individual judges and to be highly personal. Even in stable countries, where the rule of law and the independence of judiciary and profession are respected, there is a less-dramatic tension between the standards and tone of the lawyers on the one hand and the political administration on the other. For the lawyers, policy is largely concealed in the propositions that constitute the normative system, and legal reasoning usually involves definitions and processes of inference from the body of such propositions themselves rather than directly from the policies that the norms subserve. There have often been revolts against such “logic” within the legal profession itself, especially in the 20th century, but it still remains the most common method of thinking among lawyers, and it is doubtful whether one can speak of a “rule of law” at all unless a good deal of legal reasoning is conceptual in style. Politicians and administrators, on the other hand, are more likely to reason directly from policies and purposes and from the considerations relevant to their attainment. This divergence of approach is often illustrated by referring to the tension between the police officer, confident that he has the guilty man and intent only on putting him in jail, and the lawyers and judge, who insist on the need for “conviction according to law (criminal law),” which may involve applying rules of evidence that seem artificial and even absurd to the police officer. In rigid constitutional systems, where there is judicial review of legislation, politicians may be affronted at the way in which political issues are transformed by the lawyers into legal issues. In many modern countries there has been a tendency to remove certain kinds of disputes both from the courts and from the lawyers and to vest their determination in administrative bodies before which lawyers are denied standing, so as to escape what has been regarded as the blight of legal reasoning; as often there have been reactions in favour of restoring the “rule of law” and the lawyers. In such disputes it is often difficult to distinguish between lawyerly attitudes that reflect the necessary features of a rule of law from those that merely reflect the temporary self-interest of particular lawyers or their clients.

The bar's independence

      Independence is also an issue for lawyers themselves, often in ways that may involve economic considerations as much as, if not more than, political considerations. In the United States and, to a lesser degree, other liberal-democratic states with well-developed legal professions, important scholars have argued that the bar has steadily been losing the very qualities—including most notably independence from its clientele—that distinguish the practice of law from the conduct of any business. A great deal of this, they suggest, has to do with the nature of the marketplace for legal services.

      Not only has the number of attorneys grown markedly (with the United States now having more than one million), but this growth has been most pronounced in large law firms whose members have become accustomed to annual incomes far in excess of their predecessors in the mid- to late 20th century (even taking account of inflation). At the same time, there is an increasing competition for clientele, who especially in the business world have been conducting more of their legal work themselves while eschewing long-term relationships with outside law firms in favour of more ad hoc arrangements. Moreover, of late, what are known as multidisciplinary practices (such as accounting firms offering legal services) and other nontraditional providers of legal and business advice (such as consulting firms) have intensified the competition for clientele.

      The foregoing economic changes, academic critics contend, have eroded the bar's independence, in the sense of making it harder (or at least more costly) for lawyers to maintain an appropriate distance from their clients. Such distance, it is argued, is important because it enables lawyers to give clients their best judgment—even if it involves criticism of the client's plans—and to discharge their responsibility to the broader public interest. These changes are also affecting the bar's independence in a broader societal sense, according to some observers, by diminishing the willingness of lawyers to take on unpopular clientele, devote time to pro bono work, or engage in civic activity more generally. Other commentators, to be sure, do not bemoan these transformations but see them as evidence of an overdue evolution toward a greater rationalization of the delivery of legal services.

Regulation by statutes and bar associations

      Since about 1800 most countries have brought their legal professions under systems of statutory control with three main principles: (1) admission to practice automatically and compulsorily makes the lawyer a member of an appropriate professional association, (2) those associations are given substantial powers regarding legal education, admission to practice, and the disciplining of the profession but are subject to overriding powers vested in the courts and/or (especially in the Romano-Germanic systems) government legal departments, and (3) the practice of law for reward is prohibited—generally or as to particular functions—to persons not admitted under the system. More than half of the U.S. states have such a system, which is known as the “integrated bar”; in the other states bar associations (bar association) are voluntary and have few controlling powers. England has retained the traditional Inns of Court (in whose management the judges play a leading role) for barristers (barrister), but solicitors are subject to a statutory system as above. In some countries (e.g., France), professional organization is regionalized to correspond with judicial organization, and in some federal countries (e.g., the United States, Canada, and Australia), professional control is vested in the states; such situations create the problem of a national organization that is generally a voluntary federation of regional bodies and therefore lacking in compulsive authority. The American Bar Association, established in 1878, is a leading example. In other federal countries (e.g., Germany and India), the central government has created national law associations responding to the need for a system of control. The law associations, apart from the functions already mentioned, help their members to understand and apply professional ethics, and they develop canons of ethics to cover new problems. They are often active in the prohibition of legal practice by unqualified persons, which tends to bring them into dispute with other professions—e.g., tax accountants and land salesmen—whose members wish to perform legal functions in relation to their tasks and often have considerable knowledge of the relevant law.

      Where the profession is divided, it is usually possible to transfer from one branch to another, though sometimes after delay or additional training. In many of the Romano-Germanic systems, however, professional mobility is severely restricted by another factor—numerical limits on the numbers admitted to a branch of the profession. There are usually limits on the numbers of procurators and notaries, and in some cases, notably the highest French courts, advocate and procurator functions have been combined for a particular jurisdiction and a limit has been placed on numbers; otherwise, the number of advocates is generally not restricted. In the restricted cases a person admitted to practice can work in the profession only as an employee of an existing practitioner or after buying out such a practitioner.

      The opportunity to enter or pursue the profession can also be much influenced by the varying national rules regarding legal partnerships. They are prohibited for English barristers and for most divided bars derived from that system and among some of the Romano-Germanic specialized advocates and notaries (notary). In France law partnerships are permitted, and the proportion of lawyers practicing in this manner is constantly increasing. Incorporation of legal practitioners is almost universally prohibited. These restrictions result from the emphasis on personal responsibility of the individual lawyer to his client, to the court, and to the ethical system. In countries with fused professions, however, partnership is usually permitted. Law firms in Germany and Japan, for example, historically tended to be small, though that situation is changing. Even in the United States, single-person practices and small partnerships are still common, though the overall trend has been toward the growth of larger firms.

Geoffrey Sawer Mary Ann Glendon William P. Alford

The situation in developing countries

      Arguably, the challenges to the independence of the bench and bar described above have been even more acute in the developing world, perhaps because the institutions that might support an independent judiciary are newer and more fragile. Since the epochal geopolitical changes of the late 20th century, including the collapse of Soviet communism and the end of apartheid in South Africa, extensive efforts have been under way in many countries to build an independent bench and bar as part of larger programs aimed at strengthening the rule of law and fostering the development of democracy and free markets. Often these programs have received considerable assistance from foreign governments, major foundations, and multilateral organizations such as the World Bank. The process, however, is slow and uneven, in part because the idea of insulating the judiciary from direct political influence is a new one in some parts of the world, as is the notion that lawyers have an obligation to defend unpopular clients in the broader public interest.

Contemporary trends

      It is no cliché to suggest that the legal profession has been undergoing enormous changes in recent years, and there are many reasons to believe that the pace of change will accelerate. Perhaps the most obvious change of the past half century concerns the demography of the legal profession in the United States and many other countries. Whereas even as late as the mid-20th century few women and ethnic minorities (minority) attended law school, now approximately half of all law students in the United States are women, while roughly one-fifth to one-quarter identify themselves as members of a previously underrepresented minority. The impact of these demographic shifts has not fully made itself felt at the partnership level in the nation's leading law firms, for reasons that have been hotly debated (one contention is that the great number of work hours demanded of young lawyers imposes particular strains on women). Nevertheless, at the associate level and in government, business, and academe, the growing presence and prominence of women and minority attorneys is evident.

      The internal structure of the legal profession is also changing. In the United States, growth in the profession since the late 20th century has been most discernible among the country's 250 largest firms, many of which have absorbed smaller domestic or foreign firms in an effort to establish a national or international presence. In other countries too, such as the United Kingdom and Germany, many of the leading law firms have merged with foreign counterparts, an innovation that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago. Meanwhile, a number of the most economically advanced civil-law states, such as Japan and South Korea (Korea, South), have been rapidly increasing the size of their bars.

      The prevalence of mergers between law firms of different countries is indicative of the profound changes in the legal profession brought about by globalization (globalization, cultural)—the increasing exchange across international boundaries of capital, goods, technology, services, personnel, and ideas. Multilateral entities such as the European Union and, to a lesser extent, the World Trade Organization (via its General Agreement on Trade in Services) and the North American Free Trade Agreement have sought to facilitate the international exchange of legal services by means of special agreements.

      Law firms have also taken advantage of technological advances in computers and the Internet to avail themselves of electronic databases for legal research, to provide legal advice to clients far from their home offices, and even to develop software that can be used to reduce the human element in the preparation of contracts, licensing agreements, wills, and other documentation. Supporters of these changes suggest that they will better equip law firms to compete with large accounting firms and other organizations that offer legal services, while opponents worry that they are helping to erode the distinction between law and business.

      But perhaps the biggest changes in the legal profession have come in the developing world. The most notable example may be China, where the profession has expanded exponentially since 1980. Nor is China alone, as the already sizable bars in India, Brazil, and other developing countries continue to expand apace—creating what, it is hoped, will be new opportunities for economic growth and the spread of democratic ideals.

William P. Alford

Additional Reading

J.H. Wigmore, Panorama of the World's Legal Systems, 3 vol. (1928, reprinted 1992), was one of the first efforts to provide a comprehensive comparative historical survey. More recently, Richard Abel and Philip Lewis have compiled three volumes intended to address the legal profession comparatively: Lawyers and Society: The Common Law World (1988), Lawyers and Society: The Civil Law World (1988), and Lawyers and Society: Comparative Theories (1989). Terence Halliday and Lucien Karpik (eds.), Lawyers and the Rise of Western Liberalism (1997), provides thoughtful accounts of the roles lawyers have played in the growth of the liberal state.The history of the profession in a variety of important jurisdictions other than the United States is addressed in Robert J. Bonner, Lawyers and Litigants in Ancient Athens: The Genesis of the Legal Profession (1927, reissued 2003); Fritz Schulz, History of Roman Legal Science (1946, reprinted 1967), one of the few books on Roman law concentrating on the role of lawyers; Herman J. Cohen, History of the English Bar and Attornatus to 1450 (1929, reissued 2005), a classic account of the history of the legal profession in the Middle Ages; Brian Abel-Smith and Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological Study of the English Legal System, 1750–1965 (1967), two opposing views of the legal profession in England; Fred Phillips, The Evolving Legal Profession in the Commonwealth (1978), a comparative survey of the legal profession, ethics, and education in countries with legal systems modeled on the English; Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Lawyers and Their Society (1973), a comparative study of the profession in West Germany and the United States; John Henry Merryman, The Loneliness of the Comparative Lawyer and Other Essays in Foreign and Comparative Law (1999); Kenneth F. Ledford, From General Estate to Special Interest: German Lawyers, 1878–1933 (1996); and Melissa Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (1998).Noteworthy writings on the development of the American legal profession include Marc Galanter and Thomas Palay, A Tournament of Lawyers (1991, reissued 1993); Mary Anne Glendon, A Nation Under Lawyers (1994, reissued 1996); Anthony Kronman, The Lost Lawyer: The Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession (1993, reissued 1995); Robert Nelson, David Trubek, and Rayman Solomon (eds.), Lawyers' Ideals/Lawyers' Practices: Transformations in the American Legal Profession (1992); Deborah Rhode, In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession (2000); and David Wilkins, “Who Should Regulate Lawyers?” Harvard Law Review, 105:801 (1992).More on the modern legal profession internationally can be found in Abel and Lewis, mentioned above; John J. Barcelo and Roger C. Cramton (eds.), Lawyers' Practice and Ideals: A Comparative View (1999); Jens Drolshammer and Michael Pfeifer (eds.), The Internationalization of the Practice of Law (2001); and William Alford, “Tasselled Loafers for Barefoot Lawyers: Transformations and Tensions in the World of Chinese Legal Workers,” China Quarterly, 141:22–39 (1995).William P. Alford

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