Hilary Sommerlad

Researching and Theorizing the Processes of Professional Identity Formation

This paper is concerned with professional identity formation, at both the individual and organizational levels, and the dialectic between individual processes and the social trajectory of organizational reproduction. The research project on which the paper is based was stimulated by the growing concern of United Kingdom legal education institutions and professional bodies with how new entrants to an increasingly diverse profession negotiate the changing demands of a complex stratified and segmented labour market. The paper will give a brief outline of the first stage of a longitudinal study of two cohorts of part-time and full-time students on the Legal Practice Course at a new university in England, (some of whom are now in training with firms) and representatives of the local legal employment market. A report of the research results to date will be set in the context of an exploration of some key theoretical perspectives which inform the field of the profession and of identity development, such as theories of symbolic, linguistic, and cultural capital.

Structure, agency and career strategies of white women and black and minority ethnic individuals in the legal profession

The legal profession in England and Wales is becoming more diverse. However, while white women and black and minority ethnic (BME) individuals now enter the profession in larger numbers, inequalities remain. This article explores the career strategies of 68 white women and BME legal professionals to understand more about their experiences in the profession. Archer’s work on structure and agency informs the analysis, as does Emirbayer and Mische’s (1998) ‘temporally embedded’ conceptualization of agency as having past, current and future elements. We identify six career strategies, which relate to different career points. They are assimilation, compromise, playing the game, reforming the system, location/relocation and withdrawal. We find that five of the six strategies tend to reproduce rather than transform opportunity structures in the legal profession. The overall picture is one of structural reproduction (rather than transformation) of traditional organizational structure and practice. The theoretical frame and empirical data analysis presented in this article accounts for the rarity of structural reform and goes some way towards explaining why, even in contexts populated by highly skilled, knowledgeable agents and where organizations appear committed to equal opportunities, old opportunity structures and inequalities often endure.

‘I’ve lost the plot’: an everyday story of legal aid lawyers

This paper examines the impact on a specific group of solicitors in the United Kingdom of recent changes in the delivery of legal services. These changes are seen as a form of the New Public Management (NPM), and the paper explores the proposition that NPM is producing a public sector characterized by high output but low morale, through an analysis of qualitative data from a group of ‘political’ legal aid practitioners. The data is seen to support the high-output/low-morale thesis, and the paper argues that one effect therefore of legal aid reform may be to damage the ‘political’ lawyer’s project of empowering the client and countering social injustice.

Access to legal work experience and its role in the (re)production of legal professional identity

The occupational closure experienced by solicitors drawn from ‘outsider’ groups (especially women) has been extensively documented. The growing importance of work experience as a gateway to the profession suggests that it may be playing an increasingly significant role in the processes of exclusion and the reproduction of professional identity. The lack of research into this ‘hidden’ moment in professional reproduction therefore represents a significant lacuna in our understanding of the (changing) solicitors’ profession in England and Wales. This paper reports on a preliminary exploration of legal work experience. It analyses data generated through collaboration with the Law Society in a survey of law firms. This is complemented by qualitative analysis of material obtained from firms’ websites and discussion boards. Throughout the paper we highlight the broader research questions suggested by this initial analysis.

“A pit to put women in”: professionalism, work intensification, sexualisation and work–life balance in the legal profession in England and Wales

Abstract Today, the rhetorical commitment to diversity and inclusion is almost universally espoused across the legal profession in England and Wales, and issues such as the position of women lawyers and alternative ways of working are recurring themes in the trade press. Yet statistical evidence clearly reveals a profession segmented by gender: its powerful and well remunerated positions remain overwhelmingly occupied by white men, and its working practices continue to require a professional identity unencumbered by responsibility for social reproduction. This paper draws on qualitative research to flesh out this picture and to reflect on some of the mechanisms which produce womens sub-professional status – which, it is argued, include the discourse of professionalism. Some themes identified by respondents – such as hyper-masculine work cultures in which women figure as backrooms technicians – are longstanding. Other themes concern either new developments or a deepening of trends already under way, which appear to be having a particularly adverse impact on womens working conditions. These trends include the intensification of work; the heightened significance of client care, leading to the development of ‘boundary spanning roles’ that generate even greater demands in terms of time and emotional labour, and the accentuation of misogyny and harassment consequent on the eclipse of traditional gentlemanly professionalism by a sexualised corporate culture. Under these conditions the possibility of the profession developing working conditions which offer work–life balance appears remote.

Social justice on the margins: the future of the not for profit sector as providers of legal advice in England and Wales

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act (LASPO) has been described by many commentators as a dramatic curtailment of access to justice which is likely to impact disproportionately on marginalised groups and individuals. This paper seeks to set LASPO in its historical context; it is viewed as a radical development, but nevertheless one that is consistent with the policy discourses of responsibilisation and consumerism dominant since at least the 1990s. The paper uses research into the experience of the not for profit sectors involvement in legally aided welfare advice to frame this perspective. Key findings include the extent to which respondents (both managers and front line workers) felt that while Legal Services Commission funding had transformed organisational practices and ethos, the implementation of LASPO and the austerity programme represented a critical watershed for the sector and its capacity to fulfil what front line workers in particular felt was their ‘mission’.

Reflections on the reconfiguration of access to justice

This paper draws on a series of research studies of the last two decades of legal aid reforms to consider their wider social and political meaning. They are evaluated against a ‘master ideal’ of access to justice rather than a fictive golden age. It will be argued that despite New Labours rhetoric of social inclusion and the positive initiatives this sometimes produced, the neo-liberal character of the reforms has eroded both social rights and access to justice. Their internal logic requires the imposition of a market and the use of least cost labour, thereby reducing the guarantee of due process to the lowest common denominator: consumption of a legal service becomes a sufficient alternative to just outcomes.

Some Reflections on the Amorality of the Market: Correspondent's Report from the United Kingdom

The key aspects and features of the issue of amorality of the market from the United Kingdom are discussed. The way in which the tenor of the Jackson Review reflects on the public reputation of lawyers in England and Wales, and the relationship of these reforms to Legal Disciplinary Partnerships (LDPs) and Multi Disciplinary Partnerships (MDPs) are highlighted.

Shaping the size and composition of the profession. chapter 3: halting the tide and chapter 4: reflecting society

The distinctiveness of Professor Abel’s method in this monumental work (Abel, 2003) lies in the way his complex theorisation of the recent history of the legal profession is drawn from extraordinarily detailed source work. The result is a rich critical history which will prove invaluable for students of the English and Welsh legal profession. At the same time the fact that the analysis is set in the context of underlying social and political change renders it an important contribution to our understanding of the ongoing reconfiguration of state and citizenship. In the Weberian market control model, which identifies professionalism as a middle class strategy for securing status and income, control over entry is the profession’s “first line of defence” (p. 96). Chapters 3 and 4 chart the struggle to retain that control in the face of growing exposure to competing market forces as a result of the loss of state shelters, and the great, but fluctuating, increase in the demand for legal services. As Abel’s detailed, chronological narrative graphically reveals, these changes snowballed into a transformation which the profession in its traditional form could not survive. By the end of the second half of the last century the socio-economic and cultural changes which the UK was undergoing were eroding the profession’s pre-capitalist structure and culture, and exposing it’s anachronistic and self-serving elitism, fuelling a decline in trust and respect. Yet, perversely, another dimension of the changes was a spread of professionalism in terms of both the permeation of professional values across a wider range of occupations, and the numbers of aspirants to professional status. The resulting exponential increase in the numbers of would-be lawyers was further undermining the sustainability of the profession’s ‘gentlemanly’ character. Chapter 3 is an account of the ‘imperative and impossibility’ of controlling this increase. Of course entry barriers are not simply about restricting numbers, but also about determining who may join a profession. The question of social identity was pivotal for INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 11, NO. 1 & 2, MARCH & JULY 2004

Access to a Career in the Legal Profession in England and Wales: Race, Class, and the Role of Educational Background

Much attention is currently focused on equality and diversity within the legal profession in England and Wales, not least because the profile of law graduates has markedly changed and diversified over the past 20 years, and yet the senior legal profession has yet to reflect the increasing number of women and Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) entrants over that period. A body of previous research evidence from around the UK indicates that social educational background has a major role to play in the extent to which aspiring lawyers gain entry into, progress, and succeed within the legal profession (Shiner, 1994; Shiner et al. 1999; Shiner et al., 2000; Nicolson, 2005; Thomas, 2000, Sommerlad, 2008). Law Society statistical evidence indicates that aspiring BAME lawyers are concentrated in the less prestigious parts of the higher education sector, and it has been argued that this places them at a disadvantage as regards entry into the legal profession. This chapter is informed by data collected for a study of diversity in the legal profession in England and Wales which was commissioned by the Legal Services Board (Sommerlad et al., 2010). In that study we used biographical interviews (77) to consider the barriers and choices that faced women and BAME lawyers and would-be lawyers. Using a Bourdeusian analysis, we examine the extent to which participants considered that their educational background pre-University and their course of study and institution at University level had an impact on their legal career. It explores this argument through the various themes that emerged from the data, including the profession’s reliance symbolic and social capital for entry into the legal profession. In doing so, we illustrate a number of structural factors which inhibit the development and utilization of talent due to value attribution by dominant groups in the legal profession.