A Profession in Transition? — Lawyers, The Market and Significant Others

There is an ever increasing literature on the changing nature of the professions 1 and middle class work. 2 Accompanying this, is a growing interest amongst academics about the future of professionalism within law. 3 This paper seeks to address certain aspects of these debates by concentrating on the emergence of two relatively independent sets of firms.It will analyse the possible transformation of the legal profession into two spheres within the area of commercial law and, by implication, the profession more generally.The paper suggests that this transformation is important as it threatens the striking degree of homogeneity which was found in the profession for much of the fifty years after 1930. 4 In the past where fragmentation existed it was largely based around spatial location.5 However, it will be argued that today's transition and, possibly fragmentation, is not solely based on spatial location (although this is obviously an element within this change) but on three inter-related factors: