The rise of the large global law firm is analyzed. The analysis covers the reach of large law firms, their different types of work, and the ways in which they construct legal arrangements to enable transnational business. This entails looking at what lawyers actually do. Professionalism and issues of multidisciplinary practice are also considered.

Megalawyering in the Global Order: The Cultural, Social and Economic Transformation of Global Legal Practice

(1996). Megalawyering in the global order: The cultural, social and economic transformation of global legal practice. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 3, The Solicitors' in Transition, pp. 169-214.

Megalawyering in the global order: The cultural, social and economic transformation of global legal practice

The last few years have been difficult ones for legal aid. As the government abolishes the contributory green forms scheme, increases contributions, and holds down pay rates, the President of the Law Society has accused it of crippling a 'once proud public service'.' At the same time, the number of cases dealt with by the scheme and the cost per case continue to increase.2 Legal Action Group has described the current state of legal aid as 'stagflation'.3 Increased use of legal aid and rising costs are combined with decreasing eligibility, morale, and belief. Why is it that each year the legal aid scheme appears to deal less well with the increasing demands made upon it? This chapter looks back over the last fifty years of civil legal aid, to chart its varied fortunes within the welfare state. It argues that the changing philosophies of welfare have shaped both the structure of the scheme, and the demands made upon it. At the same time as governments have confined direct welfare services to the poor to the neglect of those of moderate means they have put greater emphasis on individual 'consumer' action as a means of regulating welfare providers. Thus, the early 1980s saw the expansion of rights enforced through courts and tribunals, though by the end of the decade the emphasis had shifted to internal complaints systems and formal complaints handlers, such as regulators, ombudsmen, and inspectors. Legal aid has failed to keep pace with either development. Private solicitors have traditionally ignored welfare issues; the scheme fails to pay for representation before most tribunals; and the varied advice needs raised by the Citizen's Charter approach have been ignored. The welfare state is a difficult concept, as the meanings attaching to the term have changed markedly since the Second World War. In 1945 it was an aspirational depiction of a new kind of state: by the 1960s it was a label applied to specific, central, public bureaucracies.4 Now it is often used to describe a minor and residual function of a state primarily concerned with other matters. For the purposes of the present discussion, the welfare state

Rushcliffe Fifty Years on: The Changing Role of Civil Legal Aid within the Welfare State

Thatcher's Will

An approach that has dominated the contemporary literature on the legal profession is that of Abel (1986, 1988, 1989), whose market control thesis has become the ‘dominant paradigm’ for examining lawyers (Paterson, 1994, p. 302). Abel continues with this market control thesis in his latest work English Lawyers between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism (2003). To focus his contemporary account of lawyers in England and Wales, Abel applied a market orientation, which highlighted the extent to which the profession is currently tempered by competition. In the past the profession had been adept at avoiding competition (Abel, 1989), achieved largely by projecting a service ideal ideology, which secured State protection from competition in return for service to the client (Parsons, 1978). This protective system no longer applies, with “market pressures increasingly penetrating (the) sanctuary of the legal profession” (Abel, 1989, p. 291). Abel adopts Larson’s Weber-derived market control theory to examine how the legal profession deals with competition (Larson, 1977; Weber, 1954). Under this theory, all occupations under capitalism are compelled to seek control over their markets (Abel, 1986). In pursuing this market orientation perspective, Abel argues that the economic dynamic of the market moulds behavioural patterns, with external economic and market forces determining the behaviour of the legal profession. Abel’s critics, however, have pointed out that lawyers often have little control over their markets or clients (Paterson, in Abel & Lewis, 1989, vol. 1), and that whilst professionals “undoubtedly . . . attempt to establish and maintain market control”, this is often through ‘reactive’ measures (McCahery & Picciotto, 1995, p. 239). Abel acknowledges that as the profession encounters difficulties in controlling supply, both of and by producers, there is an increase in attempts to influence demand; demand, that is, for lawyers’ products, the services they provide. Abel, however, continues to treat the market as an entity separate from the legal profession when articulating the profession’s endeavours to retain control in responding to changes in the market. Therefore, an underlying deficiency persists in Abel’s account because its concentration on INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 11, NO. 1 & 2, MARCH & JULY 2004

Lord Mackay

Papers

Litigation in the 1990s