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Legal Data Banks, the Glut of Lawyers, and the German Legal Profession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Michael Hartmann
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Abstract

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Recent developments in higher education and in microelectronics have converged to alter the work and status of the legal profession. In this study of the subject of these far-reaching trends on lawyers in the German insurance industry, the professional jurisdiction of lawyers is found to have been greatly weakened. The need for the professional expertise of lawyers is greatly reduced because qualified nonlawyer business clerks have access through the legal data banks to legal knowledge once only available to them after many years of experience. Ironically, however, the excess supply of lawyers has led insurance companies to hire them to do work below their qualification level that can be done by qualified nonlawyer clerks; thus these over-credentialed lawyers find it almost impossible to establish or maintain any professional legal jurisdiction.

Type
Change and Adaptation of Lawyers' Work: Evolving Theories
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , 1993 , pp. 421 - 441
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 by The Law and Society Association

Footnotes

This research project was carried out by the author and Dipl. Soc. M. Wegge.

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