American Lawyers / Edition 1

by Richard L. Abel

Overview

This detailed portrait of American lawyers traces their efforts to professionalize during the last 100 years by erecting barriers to control the quality and quantity of entrants. Abel describes the rise and fall of restrictive practices that dampened competition among lawyers and with outsiders. He shows how lawyers simultaneously sought to increase access to justice while stimulating demand for services, and their efforts to regulate themselves while forestalling external control. Data on income and status illuminate the success of these efforts. Charting the dramatic transformation of the profession over the last two decades, Abel documents the growing number and importance of lawyers employed outside private practice (in business and government, as judges and teachers) and the displacement of corporate clients they serve. Noting the complexity of matching ever more diverse entrants with more stratified roles, he depicts the mechanism that law schools and employers have created to allocate graduates to jobs and socialize them within their new environments. Abel concludes with critical reflections on possible and desirable futures for the legal profession.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195072631
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	09/12/1991
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.19(h) x 0.76(d)

About the Author

University of California, Los Angeles

Table of Contents

	Tables	xiii
1.	Introduction	3
2.	Theories of the Professions	14
	Weberian Theories of Professions in the Marketplace	18
	Marxist Theories of Professions in the Class Structure	30
	Structural Functional Theories of Professions and Social Order	34
	Theoretical Frameworks for Understanding American Lawyers	39
3.	Controlling the Production of Lawyers	40
	Lawyers Without a Profession	40
	The Rise of Professionalism	44
	Tightening Control Over Supply	48
	The Trajectory of Entry Control	71
4.	The Consequences of Controlling Entry	74
	The Number of Lawyers	74
	Influences on the Production of Lawyers	77
	The Characteristics of Lawyers	83
	Demographic Change	108
5.	Restrictive Practices: Controlling Production by Producers	112
	Defining the Monopoly	112
	Defending the Turf Against Other Lawyers	115
	Price Fixing	118
	Advertising and Solicitation	119
	Specialization: Recapturing Control by Redefining the Market	122
	The Rise and Fall of Restrictive Practices	123
6.	Demand Creation: A New Strategy in the Professional Project?	127
	The Rediscovery of Legal Need	128
	The Limitations of Professional Charity	129
	Institutionalizing the Right to Legal Defense in Criminal Cases	130
	The Contested Terrain of Civil Legal Aid	132
	Public Interest Law	134
	Expanding the Middle-Class Clientele	135
	Is Demand Creation an Effective Means of Market Control and Status Enhancement?	139
7.	Self-Regulation	142
	The Promulgation of Ethical Rules	142
	The Disciplinary Process	143
	Protecting the Client Against Financial Loss	150
	Ensuring Professional Competence	151
	The Record of Self-Regulation	156
8.	How Successful was the Professional Project?	158
	The Income of Lawyers	158
	The Status of Lawyers	163
	The Varying Fortunes of Lawyers	164
9.	Differentiation Within the Legal Profession	166
	The Professional Periphery: Employed Lawyers	167
	The Core of the Profession: Private Practice	178
	One Profession or Many? The Dilemmas of Collective Action	208
10.	Reproducing the Profession	212
	Law School Socialization	212
	The Rationalization of the Labor Market	214
	Allocation to Roles	217
	The Revival of Apprenticeship	221
	The Institutionalization of Reproduction	223
11.	The Future of the Legal Profession	226
	Tables	249
	Entry Barriers	249
	Number of Lawyers	277
	Characteristics of Lawyers	284
	Self-Regulation	291
	Differentiation Within the Legal Profession	298
	Notes	319
	Bibliography	355
	Theories of the Professions	355
	American Lawyers	365
	Index	389

Editorial Reviews

"Richard Abel's most recent project has turned contemporary history like a craftsman to provide us with a punctilious chronicle of a transformative period in English legal politics. The rishness of English Lawyers lets us see individuals and institutions respond to one another, develop and lose credibility, succeed and fail in the marketplace od ideas, and parlay those positions into future successes and losses. We can watch lawyers hoist the profession and themselveswith their own rhetorical petard, and we also witness the interaction of argumentation, ideology, and interests in modern politics."—Law and Politics Book Review

From the Publisher