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1 Int'l J. Legal Prof. 3 (1994)

handle is hein.journals/injlepro1 and id is 1 raw text is: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 1, NO. 1, 1994

EDITORIAL
Come of age
AVROM SHERR
Editor
Academic work on the legal profession presents a motley but focused set of disciplines,
approaches and intentions. Housed in the work of both academic and professional
lawyers, economists, philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, anthropologists and
academics from business and management studies, the only commonality has been the
clear subject of their studies and research, the legal professions themselves. The fournal
is intended to provide a major forum for the range of approaches and disciplines to read
and understand each other's work. It may provide a coherent focus, it may encourage
further interdisciplinary work, it may simply provide easier access; all of these are
essential to an area of study which has come of age.
Law is seen as part of the foundation and structure of society. It is not expected
that law should change too fast in order to accommodate what may be fashions or fads
of morality. It is seen as a slow and stable influence rather than a vibrant,
accommodating system which engenders change of its own accord. The legal
profession and its lawyers are trained and nurtured within the same image. They
operate the ponderous weight of the law and are subject to, as well as being part of,
its delays and lag time. They share much of the image of the law and have been slow
to change their functions, style of work, structure and training even in the face of
multiple changes all around them. The 1980s, especially the last half of the decade,
and early 1990s produced circumstances for change which became irresistible for
lawyers in many countries. Many of those circumstances were dependant upon external
factors in the economic and political environment. Some involved simply the need to
catch up in time with changes which should have occurred long before. Some factors
involved pressure from outside the professions and some were internal to their own
organisation and structure. Some changes were readily acceptable to the majority of
the professions, or powerful forces within them, and other changes were (and are still
being) fought tooth and nail.
The legal professions of North America, Europe and Australasia have all been
subject to these pressures of major change in organisation, structure, independence,
training and work and have reacted with different rates of change. Internally, relaxed
systems for advertisement and promotion have produced a tension between the
brashness of the world of marketing and the sedate elitism of the professional ideal.

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