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17 Int'l J. Legal Prof. 1 (2010)

handle is hein.journals/injlepro17 and id is 1 raw text is: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, Routledge VOL. 17, NO. 1, MARCH 2010 1 - Editorial: Special issue - legal change on legal practitioners HERBERT M. KRITZER University of Minnesota Law School, Minneapolis, USA There is a huge literature focused on the impact or consequences of law and legal change. We know that law sometimes has its intended impact, sometimes does not have that impact, and often has impacts that were unintended (Bogart, 2002). Surprisingly, with all of the research about law's impact, there is very little research on how changes to law impact those engaged in the practice of law. Certainly there is research on changes specifically dealing with changes in the law governing legal practice; examples include the end of the conveyancing monopoly (Domberger & Sherr, 1989), and the creation of conditional fees (Fenn et al., 2002). However, legal change not directly related to legal practice can also impact the work of legal professionals. An extreme impact can occur when legal change eliminates the need for a particular type of legal service. One such example was described to me some years ago. Prior to the deregulation of airlines in the US, a group of lawyers specialized in preparing the regulatory filings required when an airline wanted to start a new route. This work was a lucrative area of practice for the small group of lawyers engaged in it. The need for this work disappeared overnight when deregulation allowed airlines to start new routes with no government approval, and the lawyers who had done the work were faced with the need to find new areas of practice. Such extreme impacts are unusual, but legal changes can impact both the flow of work and how work needs to be done. The idea behind creating this special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession was to suggest both the range of possible impacts of legal change on the work of legal professionals and approaches to studying those impacts. The four articles in this issue reflect a wide variety of changes, from major systemic changes in the post-Soviet Russia to changes implicitly aimed at legal professionals to changes expli- citly focused on lawyers. The studies involve lawyers in Russia, England, the US, and Australia. The projects upon which the four studies are based reflect a range of research styles from surveys to interviews to systematic analysis of case records. Address for correspondence: Herbert M. Kritzer, Marvin J. Sonosky Chair of Law and Public Policy, University of Minnesota Law School, 326 Mondale Hall, 229 19th Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA. E-mail: kritzergumn.edu ISSN 0969-5958 print/ISSN 1469-9257 online/10/010001-3 ( 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09695951003608341

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