Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Knowledge Worker
- 2 The Lawyer as Client Defender
- 3 The Lawyer as Opportunity Enabler
- 4 The Lawyer as Corporate Investigator
- 5 The Global Legal Services Industry and the Harnessing of Knowledge
- 6 Dechert LLP as a Case-Study Observation of Investigatory Knowledge Work
- 7 Poul Schmith/Kammeradvokaten and Legal Knowledge in Complex Corporate Investigations
- 8 Considerations on the Jeffrey Grant Case: Legal Ethics and Redemptive Knowledge
- 9 Knowledge Management
- 10 Knowledge Work Systems
- 11 The Value Shop Configuration of Legal Services
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Authors
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 December 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Introduction
- 1 The Knowledge Worker
- 2 The Lawyer as Client Defender
- 3 The Lawyer as Opportunity Enabler
- 4 The Lawyer as Corporate Investigator
- 5 The Global Legal Services Industry and the Harnessing of Knowledge
- 6 Dechert LLP as a Case-Study Observation of Investigatory Knowledge Work
- 7 Poul Schmith/Kammeradvokaten and Legal Knowledge in Complex Corporate Investigations
- 8 Considerations on the Jeffrey Grant Case: Legal Ethics and Redemptive Knowledge
- 9 Knowledge Management
- 10 Knowledge Work Systems
- 11 The Value Shop Configuration of Legal Services
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Authors
Summary
This book has provided the first thorough examination of the concept of lawyer roles in knowledge work, offering a detailed comparative exploration and analysis of the globalized legal services industry in terms of individual and corporate professional function. Knowledge management has long been identified by scholars in the business sphere as a key strategic device in the development of complex organizations and developing markets. Nevertheless, this essential process has been largely ignored within socio-legal studies and professional practice applications as a specific subject for close scrutiny. This book has addressed this anomaly. It has recognized the strong lineage and correlation that exists between the study of knowledge management and contemporary legal practice. Using an interdisciplinary focus which included illustrative case studies, the book has explored European, North American, and global perspectives and models to identify, position, and reveal the forward-looking lawyer as defender, enabler, and investigator . In doing so, it has re-evaluated current strategic legal practice and organizational behavior within the context of changing patterns of business, workplaces, social rules, systems of governance, decision making, social ordering, and control.
A founding premise of this book was that a lawyer is fundamentally a knowledge worker providing legal services to clients. In the role of enabler, the lawyer tends to be in a long-term relationship with the client. This is an enduring relationship involving some level of permanence. Lawyers experience stability as they recognize repeated work elements and interactions with the same clients. Social identification at work is in the tradition of being understood in terms of partnership or another role in the law firm with a stable group of corporate and/or individual clients. There is an enduring and significant relationship with others at work as well as with continuing clients in the market for legal services. In the roles of defender and investigator, the lawyer tends to be in a shortterm relationship with the client, forming temporary relationships again and again in their working lives. Such transient relationships derive from a project-based organization of work, with arrangements existing as inherently disposable exchanges that are disbanded on the completion of work. There are short-term, unpredictable transactions in transient relationships, with legal professionals experiencing temporary, transient, and restricted (if repeated) elements of relationships.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Lawyer Roles in Knowledge WorkDefender, Enabler, Investigator, pp. 243 - 246Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2023