Developments in the Regulation of Lawyers

Competing Segments and Market Client, and Government Controls

Dados Bibliográficos

ID18992253
AutoresMartyn J Powell (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, autor correspondente)
Ano1985
Volume64
Fascículo2
Páginas281-305
Data de publicação1985-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Forces (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0037-7732 • E-ISSN: 1534-7605
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/sf/64.2.281
OpenAlexW2159303355
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas8

The series of challenges to the autonomy and self-regulatory authority of the pro-fessions which occurred in the 1970s has generally been attributed to changes in public attitudes and values. Questioning the adequacy of this explanation, this paper examines the emergence of new or strengthened market, client, and govern-ment controls affecting the legal pro fession and argues that these developments were initiated or facilitated by the actions of segments of the bar itself seeking to further their own interests. New market, client, and government controls served to modify and supplement collegial regulation rather than displace it. Further-more, it is argued that these developments contribute not so much to the deprofessionalization of the legal profession as to its reprofessionalization whereby the parameters of its autonomy and self-regulatory authority are redefined. Over the past century the classic professions of medicine and law success-fully established the right to control their own destinies, to set educational standards, regulate admission to practice, prescribe ethical codes, and dis-cipline deviant practitioners. So successful were they in the assertion of these rights that freedom from external review and self-regulation came to be regarded by sociologists as definitional characteristics of the profes-sions, distinguishing them from other occupations (Carr-Saunders and Wilson; Goode; Greenwood). Historically, then, professional regulation took the form of peer review or collegial regulation (Freidson,b). Profes-sional associations, admissions boards, codes of ethics, and discipline

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