The legal profession has changed almost beyond recognition.
The decline in professionalism involves such factors as the number of
disciplinary cases and malpractice claims against solicitors continuing to
rise and the high levels of responsibility now demanded at very early stages
of work, often without adequate supervision and support. Assessing all fee
earners on time sheets and billing leaves us feeling two-dimensional. The
effects of lawyer advertising and media as well as competition among lawyers
for clients yet poor treatment of clients are also relevant.
It wasn't always this way. Not long ago, the concept of professionalism was
well understood. It represented a consensus about what it meant to be a lawyer
and it functioned as a kind of cultural glue. The concept remained quite
stable and clearly understood until the mid- to late-1960s.
That understanding included certain 'dependable verities': that associates
who did good work would become partners; that those who did not would be let
down easily; that partnership was a reasonably secure status; that
independence from clients 'could and should be asserted' when the occasion
required; and that economic considerations would be subordinated, if need
arose, to 'firm solidarity' or to ideals of proper conduct. Today's lawyers
are wandering amidst the ruins of those understandings.
To the lawyers left wandering the landscape of shattered assumptions, all
the talk about professionalism seems like so much hot air. The problem has to
do with the
inner lives
of lawyers and, on the collective level, of the entire
profession. There are deep spiritual issues facing lawyers. The challenge to
the profession is to honor both the life of the spirit and the life of the
mind, and therefore extend the professional map.
