Corporate Lawyers and the Public Interest

Abstract

What is the public interest in legal services? Is this public interest multiple and, if so, what does it mean in the context of the corporate and finance work of large law firms? I am currently in the middle of a three year project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, titled The Limits of Lawyers. Here, I am looking at lots of different things that each concern the role, function and proper place of large firm corporate and finance lawyers in society. One aspect of this goes to ‘the public interest’. In the paper which follows, I comment on how ‘the public interest’ has been used thus far in legal services regulation, and on what ‘the public interest’ might mean in the context of the work of corporate and finance lawyers working in large law firms. I also draw on the 43 interviews I have conducted to date for The Limits of Lawyers to show how those in practice understand and problematize the concept.

Keywords: lawyers, legal ethics, public interest, regulation

JEL Classification: K1