Comparing Legal Professions Cross-Nationally: From a Professions-Centered to a State-Centered Approach

Abstract

Legal occupations vary dramatically from country to country—in scope of activity, education, organization, and institutional setting. This essay proposes to study legal occupations focusing on their relations to the state rather than on their character as “professions.” It builds on the recent renaissance of state-centered approaches in the social sciences. A review of the diversity of law work and legal occupations in different countries leads to state-centered conceptualizations that identify institutionally comparable features of law work. A sketch of the European historical background of modern legal professions yields theoretical principles that can inform the proposed approach. Variations in the role of the state and in the relation of lawyers to the state apparatus are then shown to be related to differences between national legal professions. Even where the law is primarily seen as a profession, the character of law work is better understood when related to the state.

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