Still Special After All These Years? Fundamental Questions in Legal Services Regulation
Document Type
Contribution to Book
Publication Date
5-5-2022
Publication Title
Lawyers in 21st-Century Societies Vol. 2: Comparisons and Theories
Abstract
Prevalent theories of legal services regulation draw on analysis of established frameworks for regulating legal services in Western liberal democracies. They are focused heavily on common law jurisdictions and Anglo-American examples. Regulation by independent and self-regulating legal professions, using powers delegated expressly or implicitly by the state, permeated the first edition of Lawyers in Society. The underlying justification for a legal system dominated by legal professions has been the claim that the institutional independence of lawyers from government is an important if not fundamental condition of liberal democracy and maintenance of the rule of law (Halliday & Karpik, 1997; Hazard & Dondi, 2004 : 93; Dezalay & Garth, 2011; Boon, 2017a). Legal professionalism has therefore been an aspirational model for countries seeking to establish a democratic constitutional framework. In recent years, however, some jurisdictions have liberalised and de-regulated their legal services markets. This has been seen as an attempt to balance professional and consumer interests in markets for legal services (Boon, 2010; 2017c). It may even augur a more broadly applicable ‘competitive-consumerist’ paradigm of regulation (Semple, 2015).
A dictionary definition of ‘regulation’ encompasses all efforts to ‘control, govern, or direct’ human conduct. Accordingly, enforced rules are certainly regulation but so are ideologies, customer demands and other influences on behaviour. The traditional model of professional regulation seeks to control lawyer behaviour by imposing extensive educational and training requirements supported by codes of conduct. It is arguably through the process of professional identification that lawyers become institutionally disposed to support the citizen and resist the encroachment of state power on rights. We therefore conceive of legal services regulation as potentially including processes associated with professionalism generally, particularly ethical socialisation.
Recommended Citation
Semple, Noel and Boon, Andy. (2022). Still Special After All These Years? Fundamental Questions in Legal Services Regulation. Lawyers in 21st-Century Societies Vol. 2: Comparisons and Theories.
https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/lawpub/177