Will There Be Fallout from Clementi? The Repercussions for the Legal Profession after Legal Services Act 2007
2012 Michigan State Law Review 537-565
Miami-Florida European Union Center Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 8, No. 6
29 Pages Posted: 3 May 2008 Last revised: 8 Dec 2012
Date Written: September 1, 2012
Abstract
The paper presents the historical arguments that led to the Clementi review of the legal profession and its culmination in the Legal Services Act 2007. There were two strands: one based on consumerism (too many complaints about lawyers' services); the other based on a sustained investigation by the competition authorities into professions' restrictive practices (anti-competitive unless proved in the public interest). These led to the abandonment of traditional forms of organization for lawyers' practices (alternative business structures) and the imposition of a new regulatory structure for the profession (oversight and frontline regulators).
In the second part of the paper I examine the trends in lawyers' practices as currently pursued and as envisaged by the Act as aligned with our conceptions of professionalism. Using two hypotheticals: Tesco Law, and Goldman Sachs Skadden, I chart a move from professionalism to deskilling and proletarianization in the legal profession, not unlike that which existed in the 19th century. I also chart some of the changes that are about to result from the applications for Alternative Business Structure status being currently made. In the two months that applications have been open, over 130 applications have been submitted.
This dystopian view, which is essentially a top down conception of the legal industry, is contrasted with a more optimistic view based on the changes in the idealization of careers and life as represented by Generation Y. This is augmented by the changing nature of work, ie, post-Fordist, within organizations which in a number of ways escapes control and measurement because the distinctions between production and consumption, work and leisure allied with distributed network forms of production blur the boundaries that we have taken for granted. In contrast to the socio-economic approaches, I argue that we must examine conceptions of career, inclusion and exclusion, vocation, and community in order to understand how the professions will adapt to the postmodern condition.
Keywords: Clementi, legal profession, lawyers
JEL Classification: J44, J62, L84
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Recommended Papers
-
The European Commission Project Regarding Competition in Professional Services
-
The Re-Landscaping of the Legal Profession: Large Law Firms and Professional Re-Regulation
By John Flood
-
Institutional and Individual Justification in Legal Ethics: The Problem of Client Selection
-
The Re-Landscaping of the Legal Profession: Large Law Firms and Professional Re-Regulation
By John Flood
-
By Steve A. Mark and Georgina Cowdroy
-
The Legal World is Flat: Globalization and its Effect on Lawyers Practicing in Non-Global Law Firms
-
Designing Ethics Indicators for Legal Services Provision
By Richard Moorhead, Victoria Hinchly, ...