Introduction

Summary

A lawyer is 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. It is an enduring relationship involving some level of permanence. Lawyers experience stability as they recognize repeated work elements 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 on the market for legal services (Litchfield et al., 2021: 322):

These social identifications are important to individuals because they give meaning and stability to individuals’ self-concepts, and in doing so help reduce uncertainty and fulfill a desire for belongingness.

In the roles of defender and investigator, the lawyer tends to be in a shortterm relationship with the client. The lawyer forms temporary relationships again and again in their work lives – a notion captured by Litchfield et al. (2021) in the concept of professional network. Transient relationships derive from a project-based organization of work. Such arrangements are inherently disposable exchanges that are disbanded on the completion of work. There might be short-term, unpredictable transactions in transient relationships. Arrangement might be precarious as it is not securely held in place and may seem likely to fall or collapse at any moment. There are short-term, unpredictable transactions in transient relationships. They experience only repeated elements of relationships (Litchfield et al., 2021: 322):

As the temporary and changing nature of work becomes the norm it is the core, repeated elements of relationships that underpin work identification for an increasingly transient knowledge workforce.

Litchfield et al. (2021) studied work identifications where the traditional work identification might be exemplified by the enabler, while the transient work identification might be exemplified by the defender and the investigator. The self-conception of a lawyer in terms of work identity results from individual efforts to construct seemingly stable frames for knowledge work.