Andra le Roux-Kemp (Lincoln Law School, University of Lincoln) has posted Regulating Legal Professional Expertise at the Interface of Professional Interest and the Public Interest: The Case of the Legal Professions in England and Wales on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
The focus of this article is on the criticality of legal professional expertise in the evolution of the regulation of the legal professions in England and Wales. In tracing the history of the regulation of the English legal professions from its earliest antecedents to date, it is shown that legal professional expertise was originally a matter of professional self-interest and within the domain of the legal professions themselves, but was also always a matter of public interest; in that it informs those legal services upon which the functioning of society depend, and is also a normative necessary foundation for citizenship and the realization of fundamental human rights. In centering legal professional expertise with reference to Andrew Abbott’s system theory of professions, the possible implications of the present and ongoing marketization of legal services in England and Wales are considered. This is important, as the marketization and the possible technological transformation of legal professional expertise are, according to Abbott, the most likely destroyers of professional work. Yet, it is shown in this article that much more than the deprofessionalization of legal services or the demise of the English legal professions are at stake; the overt marketization of legal services also weakens accountability for and trust in legal professional expertise, and consumers’ interests may not always align with what is in the public interest in this regard. Moreover, without due recognition and protection of the public service role of the legal professions and upon whose gaze and practice legal professional expertise depend, this crisis of accountability for and trust in legal professional expertise may be further exacerbated with the adoption of emerging technologies in the market for legal services. It is submitted that the interest in legal professional expertise ultimately goes beyond just that of the legal professions, it is also imperative for governmentality and the rule of law.
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