At the Edge of Law: Emergent and Divergent Models of Legal Professionalism [Paperback]

Following significant changes in the legal profession since the 1980s, how do new organizational forms and actors at the edge of the law impact upon our understanding of the changing nature of the core values of mainstream legal professionalism? This methodological approach brings together a series of case studies built on original empirical research and focuses on those operating at the margins of legal professionalism in England and Wales. Also including comparative material on the US and Canada, the issues discussed are relevant for common law countries more generally and the analysis reveals the ways in which an increasingly fluid, fragmented and heterogeneous legal profession is responding to the challenges it faces in the early twenty-first century.At the Edge of Law presents an analysis of the changing nature of contemporary legal professionalism. It employs a methodological approach and presents a series of case studies built on original empirical research. It focuses on those operating at the margins of legal professionalism in England and Wales, and also includes comparative material on the US and Canada.Professor Andrew Francis is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Law, Keele University. He has published widely in the area of the legal profession and legal education.'Professions are paragons of inertia: once they achieve market control and respectability they stoutly defend the status quo in the name of a timeless professionalism . English lawyers are the worst offenders. Change, when it occurs, comes from the periphery and from outside. Andrew Francis's book is a path-breaking account of how relatively marginal actors in the English legal profession are forcing change on a reluctant core.' Richard Abel, University of California, Los Angeles, USA 'By focussing on the mainstream activities of lawyers we forget how much legal work is done by others in legal services. Andrew Francis takes us by the hand to the edge so that we can peer over and see for thl