Professional Competition and Professional Power ― Lawyers, Accountants and the Social Construction of Markets

This pathbreaking work examines the on-going efforts of lawyers and allied professionals to construct, police and redefine their respective boundaries. It provides a unique academic focus on the leading corporate practitioners, notably the newly emerging large multinational firms of lawyers and accountants, and on the ways in which they are reshaping the roles and structure of their respective fields. In this new context of transnational deal-making and regulation building, traditional models of professionalization have been rendered invalid by the increasing gulf between solo practitioners and their counterparts in large firms. Moreover, it is these new mega firms of professionals who are playing an increasingly important role in the construction of legal regulation, both national and international, and therefore influencing the character of the nation state. By focusing on this new type of organization and its impact on the respective professional fields it becomes possible to examine anew the relationship between the professions, the economy and state regulation.