Hostname: page-component-77f85d65b8-6c7dr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-03-28T10:20:26.079Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Client Influence and the Contingency of Professionalism: The Work of Elite Corporate Lawyers in China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Sida Liu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Accordingly, lawyers' work becomes flexible and adaptive to accommodate the different demands of the clients. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. As a result, client influence on professional work appears to decrease with a lawyer's seniority.

Information

Type
Law and Lawyers in China
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 2006 , pp. 751 - 782
Copyright
© 2006 Law and Society Association.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

This article is dedicated to Andrew Abbott for all the thought-provoking discussions on the professions during 2003–2004. I would like to thank Ruoying Chen, Robert Dingwall, Terence C. Halliday, Ryon Lancaster, Joanne Martin, Ethan Michelson, Robert L. Nelson, Susan P. Shapiro, Xiaomeng Zhang, and Dingxin Zhao for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Herbert M. Kritzer, editor of the Law & Society Review, and four anonymous reviewers provided valuable suggestions during the revisions, which significantly improved the quality of the article. The fieldwork in Beijing benefited from the enormously helpful support from my former colleagues at Peking University School of Law and all the other lawyers I interviewed and worked with in 2002 and 2004, whose identities have to be kept confidential. Financial support for my fieldwork was provided by the research grant from Urban China Research Network. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for all the errors and problems in the article.

References

Abbott, Andrew (1981) “Status and Status Strain in the Professions,” 86 American J. of Sociology 819–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abbott, Andrew (1988) The System of Professions: An Essay on the Division of Expert Labor. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abel, Richard L. (1988) The Legal Profession in England and Wales. Oxford, United Kingdom, and New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Abel, Richard L. (1989) American Lawyers. New York and Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Jerold S. (1976) Unequal Justice: Lawyers and Social Change in Modern America. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Berlant, Jeffrey L. (1975) Profession and Monopoly: A Study of Medicine in the United States and Great Britain. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Cain, Maureen (1983) “The General Practice Lawyer and the Client: Towards a Radical Conception,” in Dingwall, R. & Lewis, P., eds., The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors, and Others. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Carlin, Jerome E. (1962) Lawyers on Their Own: A Study of Individual Practitioners in Chicago. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Daniels, Stephen, & Martin, Joanne (2002) “It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times: The Precarious Nature of Plaintiffs' Practice in Texas,” 80 Texas Law Rev. 1781–1828.Google Scholar
Daniels, Stephen, & Martin, Joanne (2004) “The Strange Success of Tort Reform,” 53 Emory Law J. 1225–62.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves, & Sugarman, David (1995) Professional Competition and Professional Power: Lawyers, Accountants and the Social Construction of Markets. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dezalay, Yves, & Garth, Bryant G. (2002) The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dingwall, Robert (1983) “Introduction,” in Dingwall, R. & Lewis, P., eds., The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors, and Others. London: MacMillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eekelaar, John, et al. (2000) Family Lawyers: The Divorce Work of Solicitors. Oxford, United Kingdom: Hart Publishing.Google Scholar
Flood, John (1987) “Anatomy of Lawyering: An Ethnography of a Corporate Law Firm.” Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Flood, John (1991) “Doing Business: The Management of Uncertainty in Lawyers' Work,” 25 Law & Society Rev. 41–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freidson, Eliot (1970) Profession of Medicine: A Study of the Sociology of Applied Knowledge. New York: Dodd Mead.Google Scholar
Freidson, Eliot (1986) Professional Powers: A Study of the Institutionalization of Formal Knowledge. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Freidson, Eliot (2001) Professionalism: The Third Logic. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc (1983) “Mega-Law and Mega-Lawyering in the Contemporary United States,” in Dingwall, R. & Lewis, P., eds., The Sociology of the Professions: Lawyers, Doctors, and Others. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc, & Palay, Thomas (1991) Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gorman, Elizabeth H. (1999) “Moving Away from ‘Up or Out’: Determinants of Permanent Employment in Law Firms,” 33 Law & Society Rev. 637–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, John, & Kay, Fiona (1995) Gender in Practice, A Study of Lawyers' Lives. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Halliday, Terence C. (1999) “Politics and Civic Professionalism: Legal Elites and Cause Lawyers,” 24 Law & Social Inquiry 1013–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanlon, Gerard (1999) Lawyers, the State, and the Market: Professionalism Revisited. London: MacMillan Business.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinz, John P., & Laumann, Edward O. (1982) Chicago Lawyers: The Social Structure of the Bar. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Heinz, John P., Nelson, Robert L., Laumann, Edward O., et al. (1998) “The Changing Character of Lawyers' Work: Chicago in 1975 and 1995,” 32 Law & Society Rev. 751–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heinz, John P., Nelson, Robert L., Sandefur, Rebecca L., et al. (2005) Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hughes, Everett C. (1994) On Work, Race, and the Sociological Imagination, Ed. Coser, L. A. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Terence J. (1972) Professions and Power. London: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Karpik, Lucien (1999) French Lawyers: A Study in Collective Action, 1274 to 1994. Trans. N. Scott. Oxford, United Kingdom: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. (1990) The Justice Broker: Lawyers and Ordinary Litigation. New York and Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Kritzer, Herbert M. (2004) Risks, Reputations, and Rewards: Contingency Fee Legal Practice in the United States. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, Magali S. (1977) The Rise of Professionalism: A Sociological Analysis. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lazega, Emmanuel (2001) The Collegial Phenomenon: The Social Mechanisms of Cooperation among Peers in a Corporate Law Partnership. New York and Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Univ. Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mann, Kenneth (1985) Defending White-Collar Crime: A Portrait of Attorneys at Work. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Mather, Lynn, et al. (2001) Divorce Lawyers at Work: Varieties of Professionalism in Practice. Oxford, United Kingdom, and New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Michelson, Ethan (2003) “Unhooking from the State: Chinese Lawyers in Transition.” Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Michelson, Ethan (2006) “The Practice of Law as an Obstacle to Justice: Chinese Lawyers at Work,” 40 Law & Society Rev. 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millerson, Geoffrey (1964) The Qualifying Associations: A Study in Professionalization. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ministry of Justice (1992) Notice on Granting Twelve Foreign Law Firms (Coudert Brothers, etc.) to Establish Administrative Office in China. December 29, 1992. Beijing, P.R. China.Google Scholar
Ministry of Justice (2004) No. 36 Public Notice. September 27, 2004. Beijing, P.R. China.Google Scholar
Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the State Bureau of Foreign Experts (1981) Joint Notice on Forbidding Foreign Lawyers to Practice in China. October 20, 1981. Beijing, P. R. China.Google Scholar
Nelson, Robert L. (1981) “Practice and Privilege: Social Change and the Structure of Large Law Firms,” 6 American Bar Foundation Research J. 97–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert L. (1988) Partners with Power: The Social Transformation of the Large Law Firm. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert L., & Nielsen, Laura B. (2000) “Cops, Counsel, and Entrepreneurs: Constructing the Role of Inside Counsel in Large Corporations,” 34 Law & Society Rev. 457–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelson, Robert L., & Trubek, David M. (1992) “Arenas of Professionalism: The Professional Ideologies of Lawyers in Context,” in Nelson, R. L. et al., eds., Lawyers' Ideals/Lawyers' Practices: Transformation in the American Legal Profession. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Parikh, Sara, & Garth, Bryant (2005) “Philip Corboy and the Construction of the Plaintiffs' Personal Injury Bar,” 30 Law and Social Inquiry 269–304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parsons, Talcott (1937) The Structure of Social Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Parsons, Talcott (1968) “Professions,” Vol. 12, pp. 526–47 of International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Pierce, Jennifer L. (1995) Gender Trials: Emotional Lives in Contemporary Law Firms. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Douglas E. (1974) Lawyer and Client: Who's in Charge? New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Sandefur, Rebecca L. (2001) “Work and Honor in the Law: Prestige and the Division of Lawyers' Labor,” 66 American Sociological Rev. 382–403.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, & Felstiner, William L. F. (1995) Divorce Lawyers and Their Clients: Power and Meaning in the Legal Process. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Seron, Carroll (1996) The Business of Practicing Law: The Work Lives of Solo and Small-Firm Attorneys. Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shamir, Ronen (1995) Managing Legal Uncertainty: Elite Lawyers in the New Deal. Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Susan P. (2002) Tangled Loyalties: Conflict of Interest in Legal Practice. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Slovak, Jeffrey S. (1979) “Working for Corporate Actors: Social Change and Elite Attorneys in Chicago,” 4 American Bar Foundation Research J. 465–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smigel, Erwin O. (1969) The Wall Street Lawyer: Professional Organization Man? Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Spangler, Eve (1986) Lawyers for Hire: Salaried Professionals at Work. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.Google Scholar
Stinchcombe, Arthur (1965) “Social Structure and Organizations,” in March, J. G., ed., Handbook of Organizations. Chicago: Rand-McNally.Google Scholar
Thompson, James D. (1967) Organizations in Action. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Uzzi, Brian, & Lancaster, Ryon (2004) “Embeddedness and Price Formation in the Corporate Law Market,” 69 American Sociological Rev. 319–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Hoy, Jerry (1997) “The Practice Dynamics of Solo and Small Firm Lawyers,” 31 Law & Society Rev. 377–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilensky, Harold L. (1964) “The Professionalization of Everyone? 70 American J. of Sociology 137–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar