Social Organisation Amongst Australian Lawyers

Abstract

The legal profession is a rigidly organised occupational group in which lawyers are divided by reference to criteria such as the nature of their legal work, their clientele and their legal-cultural value orientations. It is possible to identify a number of distinctive types of lawyers by reference to these criteria. Upon the basis of a random sample of over 600 New South Wales lawyers it was possible to identify four work related lawyer types: property lawyers, litigation lawyers, commercial lawyers and generalists. It was also found that the career patterns of lawyers were heavily influenced by the nature of their first legal job so that there was unlikely to be much movement between lawyer types. Lawyers could also be typified by reference to their clientele into 'individual-client' lawyers, 'organisational-client' lawyers and 'mixed-client' lawyers. Legal ideology plays an important part in providing unity to this extremely diverse social organisation. Although it was possible to identify at least three major value orientations within the profession, that of 'cynical-realism' was by far the most important and was widely shared amongst all lawyer types. This finding was contrary to the ideal of service which official legal ideologies seek to espouse.