Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The legal profession refers to all the occupational roles purposely oriented towards the administration and maintenance of the legal system. Encompassing lawyers, judges, counselors, and experts of legal education and scholarship, the legal profession has been the subject of considerable reflection in the sociology of law. This sociological interest parallels the enormous attention devoted to the legal profession in various strands of sociolegal studies, including also other social sciences besides sociology as well as legal scholarship, which in turn is the result of the successful monopolization of the execution of legal functions and the resulting social standing and closure of the legal profession. The fact that the legal profession is among the most researched aspects of the institution of law is thus a direct function of the professionalization of the legal role itself. Yet, although most scholarly research on the legal profession comes from within legal scholarship and from law-and-society perspectives that are firmly nestled in legal education, there also exists a distinctively sociological tradition that examines societal aspects of the legal profession from the viewpoint of a multitude of theoretical orientations. The aspiration to maintain occupational autonomy is one of the legal profession's most critical and sociologically challenging characteristics. This professional ... log in or subscribe to read full text