Professionalization Amidst Change: The Case of the Emerging Legal Profession in Kenya

Extract

This paper is an attempt to examine the development of a profession on a western model in a developing, non-western society. It attempts to examine the relationship of the colonial social and political environment to the development of the legal profession in Kenya; and also the relationship of the post-colonial social and political environment to the changes occurring in that development. The paper proceeds on the assumption that like any occupation, the legal profession in Kenya has a history and that history, specifically the history of change from the colonial to the post-colonial social and political environment, has determined some aspects of the profession's structure (Stinchcombe, 1965: 153-54).

The literature of occupational sociology is especially rich in its treatment of one prominent category—the professions. The central theme in this literature has come to be the professional model, conceived as an ideal-type that permits comparisons between the abstract model and actual professions. The model is said to consist of a series of attributes which are deemed important in distinguishing professions from non-professional occupations. The attributes are conveniently categorized into two basic types: those that are part of the structure of the occupation and those which reflect the attitudes of the practitioners about their work (Hall, 1968). Wilensky (1964: 194) identified the structural attributes as: the creation of a full-time occupation out of the work done, the establishment of a training model reflecting the knowledge base of a profession, the formation of a professional association, and the formation of a code of ethics. The attitudinal attributes have been identified as belief in self-regulation (Greenwood, 1957: 44-55). the belief in autonomy (Scott, 1965), the use of a professional association as a major reference (Goode, 1957: 194), and the possession of a sense of calling to the field (Gross, 1958: 77-82). Although criticized (Johnson, 1972: 1973; Roth, 1974: 7-25), the professional model has come to gain some acceptance in the literature of occupational sociology as the ideal type measuring tool used to determine how far along the professionalization path a particular occupation has moved. Movement toward correspondence with the model is what is generally considered to constitute the process of professionalization (Vollmer and Mills, 1966).