Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T02:56:41.547Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Doing Business: The Management of Uncertainty in Lawyers' Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

John Flood
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Apparently naive, but in fact not, is the question: What do lawyers do? Many scholars assume the central role of the lawyer is that of the advocate, but among lawyers working in law firms advocacy consumes little of their time. Similarly, the term lawyer provides hardly any meaning in itself. The research presented here is based on a participant-observation study of a corporate law firm. The central thesis proposed, in the light of case studies of the selling of shopping mall and the arranging of a bank loan, is that business lawyers are engaged in managing uncertainty for both their clients and themselves. Managing uncertainty is accomplished through interaction rather than appeals to the law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , 1991 , pp. 41 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

Earlier versions of this article benefited from the advice of others. I would like to thank especially Douglas Maynard, who gave me several pages of extremely pertinent comments, and Jack Katz, who has given my work generous readings. Others I would like to thank for their comments are Jack Heinz, Bill Hicks, Jeff Kennedy, Hans Micklitz and Eleni Skordaki. Shari Diamond and the two anonymous reviewers were very thorough as was Bette Sikes's exacting editing.

References

ABBOTT, Andrew (1988) The System of Professions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ABEL, Richard L. (1980) “Redirecting Social Studies of Law,” 14 Law & Society Review 805.Google Scholar
ABEL, Richard L., and Philip S., LEWIS (1989) “Putting Law Back into the Sociology of Lawyers,” in Abel, R. and Lewis, P. (eds.), Lawyers in Society: Comparative Theories. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
BARNES, Barry (1985) About Science. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
BODEN, Deirdre (forthcoming) The Business of Talk. Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
CAIN, Maureen (1983) “The General Practice Lawyer and the Client: Towards a Radical Conception,” in Dingwall, R. and Lewis, P. (eds.), The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors and Others. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
D'AMATO, Anthony (1987) “The Decline and Fall of Law Teaching in the Age of Student Consumerism,” 37 Journal of Legal Education 461.Google Scholar
DANET, Brenda et al. (1980) “Obstacles to the Study of Lawyer-Client Interaction: The Biography of a Failure,” 14 Law & Society Review 905.Google Scholar
DEZALAY, Yves (1990) “The ‘Big Bang’ and the Law: The Internationalisation and Restructuration of the Legal Field,” in Featherstone, M. (ed.), Global Culture: Nationalism, Globalization and Modernity. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.Google Scholar
FELSTINER, William, and Austin, SARAT (1984) “Access to Lawyer/Client Conferences,” unpublished paper.Google Scholar
FISHER, Roger, and William, URY (1981) Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In. London: Hutchinson Business.Google Scholar
FLOOD, John (1983) Barristers' Clerks: The Law's Middlemen. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
FLOOD, John (1987) “Anatomy of Lawyering: An Ethnography of a Corporate Law Firm,” Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University.Google Scholar
FOX, Renee C. (1957) “Training for Uncertainty,” in Merton, R. et al. (eds.), The Student-Physician: Introductory Studies in the Sociology of Medical Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
FOX, Renee C. (1959) Experiment Perilous: Physicians and Patients Facing the Unknown. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
GARFINKEL, Harold (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
GEERTZ, Clifford (1983) “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” in C. Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
GILSON, Ronald J. (1984) “Value Creation by Business Lawyers: Legal Skills and Asset Pricing,” 94 Yale Law Journal 239.Google Scholar
GOFFMAN, Erving (1952) “On Cooling the Mark Out,” 25 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 451.Google Scholar
GOFFMAN, Erving (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.Google Scholar
GOFFMAN, Erving (1964) “The Neglected Situation,” 66 American Anthropologist 133.Google Scholar
GRIFFITHS, John (1986) “What Do Dutch Lawyers Actually Do in Divorce Cases?” 20 Law & Society Review 135.Google Scholar
HEINZ, John P., and Edward O., LAUMANN (1982) Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Chicago: American Bar Foundation.Google Scholar
HOROBIN, Gordon (1983) “Professional Mystery: The Maintenance of Charisma in General Medical Practice,” in Dingwall, R. and Lewis, P. (eds.), The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors and Others. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
HOSTICKA, Carl J. (1979) “We Don't Care About What Happened, We Only Care About What Is Going To Happen: Lawyer-Client Negotiations of Reality,” 26 Social Problems 599.Google Scholar
HUGHES, Everett C. (1958) Men and Their Work. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
HUGHES, Everett C. (1971) “Social Role and the Division of Labor,” in E. Hughes, The Sociological Eye: Selected Papers on Work, Self and the Study of Society. Chicago: Aldine Atherton.Google Scholar
JAMOUS, H., and B., PELOILLE (1970) “Professions or Self-perpetuating Systems? Changes in the French University-Hospital System,” in Jackson, J. A. (ed.), Professions and Professionalisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
KAGAN, Robert A., and Robert Eli, ROSEN (1985) “On the Social Significance of Large Law Firm Practice,” 37 Stanford Law Review 399.Google Scholar
LEVI, Edward H. (1949) An Introduction to Legal Reasoning. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
LLEWELLYN, Karl, and E. Adamson, HOEBEL (1941) The Cheyenne Way. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
LYNCH, Michael (1985) Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
MacCULLUM, Spencer (1967) “Dispute Settlement in an American Supermarket: A Preliminary View,” in Bohannon, P. (ed.), Law and Warfare: Studies in the Anthropology of Conflict. Garden City, NY: Natural History Press.Google Scholar
MacDONALD, Duncan A. (1989) “Speculations by a Customer About the Future of Large Law Firms,” 64 Indiana Law Journal 593.Google Scholar
MANN, Kenneth (1985) Defending White Collar Crime: A Portrait of Attorneys at Work. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
MARCH, James G., and Guje, SEVON (1988) “Gossip, Information and Decision-Making,” in March, J., Decisions and Organizations. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
MAYNARD, Douglas W. (1984) Inside Plea Bargaining: The Language of Negotiation. New York: Plenum Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
NELSON, Robert (1988) Partners with Power: The Social Transformation of the Large Law Firm. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OSBORN, John Jay (1979) The Associates. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
PARSONS, Talcott (1952) “Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical Practice,” in T. Parsons, The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.Google Scholar
PARSONS, Talcott (1954) “A Sociologist Looks at the Legal Profession,” in T. Parsons, Essays in Sociological Theory. Rev. ed. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
ROSENTHAL, Douglas E. (1974) Lawyer and Client: Who's in Charge? New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
SALACUSE, Jeswald W. (1988) “Renegotiations in International Business,” 4 Negotiation Journal 347.Google Scholar
SARAT, Austin, and William L. F., FELSTINER (1986) “Law and Strategy in the Divorce Lawyer's Office,” 20 Law & Society Review 93.Google Scholar
SCHEGLOFF, Emmanuel A. (1986) “The Routine as Achievement,” 9 Human Studies 111.Google Scholar
SCHLEGEL, John H. (1989) “American Legal Theory and American Legal Education: A Snake Swallowing Its Tail,” in Joerges, C. and Trubeck, D. (eds.), Critical Legal Thought: An American-German Debate. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft.Google Scholar
SCHON, Donald A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
SHAPIRO, Susan (1988) “The Social Control of Impersonal Trust,” 93 American Journal of Sociology 623.Google Scholar
STEVENS, Robert B. (1983) Law School: Legal Education in America from the 1850s to the 1980s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
STEWART, James (1983) The Partners: Inside America's Most Powerful Law Firms. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar