Clark, David S. --- "Legal Professions and Law Firms" [2012] ELECD 774; in Clark, S. David (ed), "Comparative Law and Society" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Comparative Law and Society

Editor(s): Clark, S. David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849803618

Section: Chapter 17

Section Title: Legal Professions and Law Firms

Author(s): Clark, David S.

Number of pages: 41

Extract:

17 Legal professions and law firms
David S. Clark*


1 INTRODUCTION

Comparative lawyers have often used the legal profession as a window to observe impor-
tant features of different legal systems. This chapter examines the legal professions--
especially the private independent professions--in several nations to determine if there
remain significant variations in the world.1 This examination reveals that the standard
comparative law division between the civil law tradition and the common law tradi-
tion still provides important explanatory power. Geographic location and the level of
economic development are also important variables. Even in the face of the process of
economic and cultural globalization, it remains true that national history and local culture
matter.

1.1 One or Many Professions?

In Canada and the United States, lawyers tend to view the legal profession as a single
entity, a unified bar. In common law countries in general, people believe it is normal for
a lawyer to switch positions without special training, perhaps from government work to
a corporate counsel's office, to a law firm, or maybe to the judiciary. However, in civil law
jurisdictions young law graduates tend to think of several legal professions, calcified by
their own career images. A civil law lawyer, especially in Europe, must be ready at an early
age to select her career either in the private sector as an advocate, notary or with a cor-
poration, or in the public sector as a judge, prosecutor or government official or attorney.
Subsequent lateral mobility ...