INTRODUCTION

• Date: 08 November 2001
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2001)0000003002
• Pages: ix-xviii
• Published date: 08 November 2001

INTRODUCTION

During the last half century, research on the sociology of the legal profession

has expanded and changed greatly. Early work on the legal profession (and

professions in general) tended to focus on the perceived or imputed differences

between professional work and other forms of work (see, e.g. Carr-Saunders &

Williams, 1933; Smigel, 1969; for a broader discussion of this work see Abbott,

1988; Nelson & Trubek, 1992). This work emphasized the normative standards

of professional cultures and the distinctive nature of professional work as

intellectual work. Based on the assumptions of Functionalism, early approaches

to professions constructed occupational typologies with characteristics claimed

to be necessary to achieve professional status (Abbott, 1988). These character-

istics included specialized university training, a calling to the profession,

autonomy, and a service orientation rather than a profit orientation. While these

characteristics did not explain professions or professional work per se, such a

Functionalist approach focused sociologists’ attention on how professions have

developed as distinct from other occupations.

By the 1960s, this approach, which would eventually become known as the

“professionalization” model, was both under attack and being extended. Eliot

Freidson (1970) argued that the Functionalist assumptions embedded in typo-

logical approaches uncritically accepted the claims of professional groups,

particularly the medical and legal professions. Freidson argued that professions

develop not by achieving a particular set of criteria, but through a political

process of claims making. For Freidson, the most important aspect of the profes-

sionalization process is that an occupation uses education and licensing

requirements to monopolize the market for expert knowledge. The ability to

limit access to specialized knowledge and services leads to the benefits and

higher status that are traditionally associated with professional occupations,

particularly self-regulation and a high level of workplace autonomy. Freidson

argues that professionals such as lawyers are in a position to dominate their

clients and dictate working conditions that are most favorable to them. Indeed,

there is significant evidence to suggest that lawyers easily dominate their rela-

tionships with individual clients (see, e.g. Rosenthal, 1974; Van Hoy, 1997; but

also see Sarat & Felstiner, 1995). However, Nelson (1988) shows that law firms

do not dominate their corporate clients. Rather, the opposite tends to be true.

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