Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T11:09:58.046Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representing the Bar: how the barristers' profession sells itself to prospective members

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Justine Rogers
Justine Rogers*
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The barristers' profession of England and Wales no longer relies on its special reputation to attract the next generation of practitioners. Today, the Bar deliberately sells itself to prospective members. This activity is designed to construct and communicate an appealing self-identity, and to tacitly sort out desirable recruits. It is a significant component of the Bar's enduring status ‘project’. Nonetheless, these processes take place within a complex wider environment, one which calls on the Bar to be competitive and distinct, as well as rational and inclusive. This paper is a unique, qualitative examination of the ways in which the barristers' profession markets itself within this context. It is the product of an investigation of the recruitment initiatives of one of the Inns of Court, targeted at law students. This paper identifies four main strands of the Bar's professional identity at this stage of entry: the Bar as traditional community; profession of excellence; inclusive profession; and a group facing certain challenges to its commanding position. The analysis shows how these multiple, sometimes conflicting, and often ambiguous themes are conveyed and handled. In the process, it reveals areas where the Bar is taking advantage of the current climate, and others where serious fault-lines in the Bar's identity have emerged. Finally, this analysis identifies the sorts of demands these images make of potential members if they want to be accepted into this old and sought-after profession.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 2012 , pp. 202 - 225
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. The Bar Council: Entry to the Bar Working Party Final Report (2007) (Neuberger Report), available at http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/news/TheEntrytotheBarWorkingPartyFinalReport, para 40(b).

2. Sommerlad, H ‘Women solicitors in a fractured profession: intersections of gender and professionalism in England and Wales’ (2002) 9 International Journal of the Legal Profession 213 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 214, citing Dingwall, R The Social Organization of Health Visiting (London: Croom Helm, 1979)Google ScholarPubMed.

3. Abel, RL The Legal Profession in England and Wales (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988) pp 48–49 Google Scholar.

4. It is not clear whether Oxbridge students are choosing the solicitors' profession over the Bar, or whether they are choosing other careers. Current data about entry to the solicitors' profession, for instance, do not isolate Oxbridge attendance.

5. ‘Russell Group’ is a term for the self-selected group of 20 prestigious, research-led UK universities.

6. S Nelson ‘Supply and demand’The Gazette 7 August 2008, available at http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/opinion/letters/supply-and-demand.

7. Bar Standards Board: Review of Pupillage: Report of the Working Group (2010), available at http://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/assets/documents/Review%20of%20Pupillage%20-%20Report%20of%20the%20Working%20Group%20200510.pdf, para 70.

8. Some 170–200 individuals enter the Employed Bar each year. The Bar Council intends to publish statistics to show whether the Employed Bar is a first or second choice in the near future.

9. ‘Become a solicitor’ the Law Society website, available at http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/becomingasolicitor/careerinlaw/difference.law.

10. Collier, R ‘ “Be smart, be successful, be yourself.…”?: Representations of the training contract and trainee solicitor in advertising by large law firms’ (2005) 12 International Journal of the Legal Profession 51 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. These terms are not entirely separable. Managerialism is a shorthand term used by sociologists to denote the efficient management of an organisation's resources in ways that try to objectively routinise, measure and make accountable the subjects' behaviour (or ‘performance’). The term also describes the use of discourse to suggest that these activities are taking place; Hanlon, G ‘a profession in transition?: lawyers, the market and significant others’ (1997) 60 MLR 798 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sachs, J ‘Teacher professional identity: competing discourses, competing outcomes’ (2001) 16 Journal of Education Policy 149 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dent, M and Whitehead, S ‘Configuring the “new” professional’ in Dent, M and Whitehead, S (eds) Managing Professional Identities: Knowledge, Performativity and the ‘New’ Professional (London: Routledge, 2002, p. 1 Google Scholar. The second, ‘commercialism’, signifies the coordinated, competitive pursuit of profit and the outcome of this pursuit. It is one of the main functions of managerialism; Muzio, D and Ackroyd, A ‘on the consequences of defensive professionalism: recent changes in the legal labour process’ (2005) 32(4) Journal of Law and Society 615 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sachs, above n 11.

12. Abel, RL English Lawyers Between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Flood, J (1989) ‘Megalaw in the Uk: professionalism or corporatism? a preliminary report’ 64 Indiana Law Journal 569–592 Google Scholar; ‘Law firms’ in Clark, D (ed) Encyclopedia of Law & Society: American and Global Perspectives (Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007)Google Scholar; Hanlon, G Lawyers, the State, and the Market: Professionalism Revisited (London: Macmillan Business, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muzio and Ackroyd, above n 11.

13. Flood, J and Whyte, A ‘Straight there, no detours: direct access to barristers’ (2009) 16 International Journal of the Legal Profession 131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 149.

14. Abel, above n 3; Boon, A and Levin, J The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales (Oxford: Hart, 2008)Google Scholar.

15. These challenges are not unique to the Bar. The solicitors' profession and other professions face similar challenges and competing tensions.

16. Geoffrey Vos QC ‘About the Bar’ Legal Hub website, available at http://www.legalhub.co.uk/legalhub/app/info/prep?doctype=bar_entries&rs=BOL1.0&vr=1.0&bctocguid=Id6e745f002c711db85b9d734e660a063&ststate=S.

17. Abel, RL ‘England and Wales: a comparison of the professional projects of barristers and solicitors?’ in Abel, RL and Lewis, Psc (eds) The Common Law World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) p 29 Google Scholar; Parker, C ‘Competing images of the legal profession: competing regulatory strategies’ (1997) 25 International Journal of the Sociology of Law 385 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. All of these figures are given before deduction of tax and chambers' charges, which can be up to 30% of earnings so they are only roughly indicative of income.

19. Salary data collected February 2007, The UK Legal 500, Prospects, UK Graduate Careers website, available at http://www.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Explore_types_of_jobs/Types_of_Job/p!eipaL?state=showocc&idno=395&pageno=2.

20. J Harris ‘Tax barristers gatecrash the bar's expanding £2m-a-year club’ The Lawyer, available at http://www.thelawyer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=121538&d=122&h=24&f=46.

21. The Lawyer.Com – Guide to a Career at the Bar, available at http://www.thelawyer.com/students/guide/the_bar.html.

22. Bar Council statistics, see http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/CareersHome/Funding/WhatBarristersEarn/.

23. Muzio and Ackroyd, above n 11, at 623. Since 2003–2004, the increase in legal aid spending has been contained, and the overall cost of legal aid has fallen by around 11% in real terms, Executive Summary, Lord Carter's Review of Legal Aid Procurement, 2006, para 3.40. These trends of legal aid in ‘retreat’ have only continued: R Smith (2011) ‘Legal aid in England and Wales, entering the endgame’ 6 May 2011, International Legal Aid Group, available at http://www.ilagnet.org/newsletterstories.php?id=37.

24. The Bar Council: Nicholas Green QC, ‘Future of the Bar’ (2010), available at http://www.barcouncil.org.uk/assets/documents/FUTURE_OF_THE_BAR_%2817%29.pdf.

25. Abel, above n 12, p 149.

26. Macdonald, KM The Sociology of the Professions (London: Sage, 1995 p 4 Google Scholar.

27. Neuberger Report, above n 1, Appendix 5.

28. Zimdars, A ‘Some observations on meritocracy and law: the profile of pupil barrister at the bar of England and Wales (2004–2008)’ (2010) 17 International Journal of the Legal Profession 117 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 118.

29. Review of Pupillage, above n 7, para 77.

30. Bottero, W Stratification: Social Division and Inequality (London: Routledge, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31. Zimdars, above n 28.

32. Nicolson, D ‘Demography, discrimination and diversity: a new dawn for the British legal profession?’ (2005) 12(2) International Journal of the Legal Profession 201 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33. Anderson-Gough, F, Grey, C and Robson , K Making up Accountants: the Organizational and Professional Socialization of Trainee Chartered Accountants (London: Ashgate, 1998) p 55 Google Scholar; Collier, above n 10.

34. Bourdieu, P Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

35. Freidson, E Professionalism: The Third Logic (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Muzio and Ackroyd, above n 11; Sommerlad, above n 2; Sommerlad, H ‘Researching and theorizing the processes of professional identity formation’ (2007) 34 Journal of Law and Society 190 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. Durkheim, E The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964) p 43 Google Scholar.

37. Carr-Saunders, AM and Wilson, PA The Professions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933 p 497 Google Scholar.

38. Goode, WJ ‘Community within a community: the professions’ (1957) 22 American Sociological Review 194 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39. Johnson, T Professions and Power (London: Macmillan, 1972)Google Scholar; Larson, MS The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar; Hafferty, FW and Light, DW ‘Professional dynamics and the changing nature of medical work’ (1995) 35 (extra issue) Journal of Health and Social Behavior 132 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40. Larson, above n 39, p xiv.

41. Larson, above n 39, p 14.

42. Abel, above n 3; above n 17.

43. Abel, above n 12; Sommerlad, above n 35.

44. Rueschemeyer, D ‘from a professions-centered to a state-centered approach’ (1987) 3 American Bar Foundation Research Journal 41 Google Scholar.

45. Anderson-Gough, F, Grey, C and Robson, K ‘in the name of the client: the service ethic in two professional services firms’ (2000) 53 Human Relations 1151 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dent and Whitehead, above n 11; Empson, L ‘Organizational identity change: managerial regulation and member identification in an accounting firm acquisition’ (2004) 29 Accounting, Organizations and Society 759 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sommerlad, above n 2; Boon, A ‘from public service to service industry: the impact of socialisation and work on the motivation and values of lawyers’ (2005) 12 International Journal of the Legal Profession 229 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46. Collier, above n 10, at 68–69.

47. Dent and Whitehead, above n 11, p 3.

48. Anderson-Gough et al, above n 45; Empson, above n 45; Boon, above n 45. Simon, on the other hand, insists that the strain on lawyers' public ideals pre-existed these changes, and is a function of the conventional role differentiation and role morality required of lawyers in their daily work. Nevertheless, there appears to be some agreement that commercialism is having a corrosive effect on earlier configurations of the professional; Simon, W The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers' Ethics (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press 1998) p 1 Google Scholar.

49. Abel, above n 12.

50. Dent and Whitehead, above n 11, p 2.

51. This fieldwork was undertaken before the fall-out of the Global Financial Crisis, and further study may be required to determine how, if at all, the Crisis affected the trends here described. Certainly, some of the key trends – the corporatisation of chambers and the evisceration of legal aid budgets – have continued, and perhaps become more pronounced since the Crisis. It would be unsurprising if the instability in the global economy further shook the foundations of the Bar's traditional modes and self-concepts.

52. It was this intensive research which formed the basis of my DPhil, ‘Pupillage: the reproduction of the barristers' profession’ (2010), completed at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford.

53. Lefebvre, H The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)Google Scholar.

54. Duman, D The English and Colonial Bars in the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1983) p 1 Google Scholar.

55. Lemmings, D ‘Ritual, majesty and mystery: collective life and culture among English barristers, serjeants and judges, c 1500–c 1830’ in Pue, WW and Sugarman, D (eds) Lawyers and Vampires: Cultural Histories of the Legal Professions (Oxford: Hart, 2003) p 27 Google Scholar.

56. Baker, JH An Introduction to English Legal History (London: Butterworths, 2002) pp 160–161 Google Scholar.

57. Ibid; Lemmings, above n 55.

58. Giddens, A Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006) p 367 Google ScholarPubMed.

59. Grosby, 1995, as cited by Phillips, T ‘Imagined communities and self-identity: an exploratory quantitative analysis’ (2002) 36 Sociology 597 CrossRefGoogle Scholar at 601.

60. Parker, C Just Lawyers (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999)Google ScholarPubMed.

61. Though not explained in these terms, this was presumably a reference to the so-called ‘cab-rank principle’, an ethical stricture which commands barristers to accept any brief which they have the requisite skills and knowledge to act in, subject to certain exceptions.

62. Schleef, DJ Managing Elites: Professional Socialization in Law and Business Schools (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006)Google Scholar; Derber, C ‘Managing professionals: ideological proletarianization and post industrial labour’ (1983) 12(3) Theory and Society 309 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63. Collier, above n 10, at 64, citing Chatterton, P and Hollands, R ‘Theorising urban playscapes: producing, regulating and consuming youthful nightlife city spaces’ (2002) 39(1) Urban Studies 95–116 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64. Collier, above n 10.

65. Collier, above n 10, at 64, citing Chatterton and Hollands, above n 63.

66. Thrift, N (1997) ‘ “Us” and “them”: re-imagining places, re-imagining identities’ in Mackay, H (ed) Consumption and Everyday Life (London: Sage, 1997) p 164 Google Scholar.

67. Sommerlad, above n 35, at 194.

68. Collier, above n 10, at 73.

69. The criteria also have implications for the relationship between eligibility or social closure and the nature of professional work, the skills, knowledge and attributes required for practice.

70. Collier, above n 10, at 69.

71. Garfinkel, H ‘Conditions of successful degradation ceremonies’ (1956) 61 American Journal of Sociology 420 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fox, R ‘Training for uncertainty’ in Merton, R, Kendall, PL and Reader, GG (eds) The Student-Physician. Introductory Studies in the Sociology of Medical Education (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Goffman, E The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1959)Google Scholar); Becker, H et al Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Haas, J and Shaffir, W ‘Taking on the role of doctor: a dramaturgical analysis of professionalization’ (1982) 5 Symbolic Interaction 187 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kennedy, D Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic against the System (Cambridge, Mass: Afar, 1983)Google Scholar; Sinclair, S Making Doctors (Oxford: Berg, 1997)Google Scholar.

72. Sommerlad, above n 2; above n 35.

73. Sommerlad, above n 35, at 195.

74. Sommerlad, above n 2, at 232.

75. Abel, above n 12; above n 17; Sommerlad, above at 35.

76. Anderson-Gough et al, above n 45, at 1170.

77. Anderson-Gough et al, above n 45.

78. TJ Peters and RH Waterman In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (1982), p 320, as cited by Anderson-Gough et al, above n 45, pp 1162–1163.

79. Elkins, JR ‘the quest for meaning: narrative accounts of legal education’ (1988) 38 J Legal Educ 577 Google Scholar, citing J Hillman Inter Views (1983).