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Jurisdictional Conflicts: A New Approach to the Development of the Legal Professions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Andrew Abbott
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Abstract

This paper sketches a new theoretical approach to the study of professions and uses that approach to analyze differences that have emerged between the American and English legal professions since the late nineteenth century. Earlier studies have generally emphasized professional structure and organization while ignoring work and its control. I argue that control of work is central to professional development. Since work is central and since professions compete for it, interprofessional competition is the determining fact in the history of professions. This paper analyzes the work available to the legal profession, the numbers and types of legal personnel available to do that work, and the various competitors contesting it. Studying in detail complaints of unqualified practice in England (1870–1940) and two American states (1910–50), I locate the types of contested work and the competitors involved, using these to explain important aspects of the two legal prof essions today. Throughout, a variety of theoretical concepts are developed and applied to the particular case. One striking discovery is the contrast in competitors; American lawyers' chief competitors were corporations, while British lawyers' chief competitor was the state. I close by evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the particular methodology here used—the study of conflicts—and suggest alternative methods using the same theoretical framework.

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American Bar Foundation Research Journal , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , Spring 1986 , pp. 187 - 224
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Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 1986 

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References

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18 The argument that follows summarizes part of a book I have just completed, tentatively entitled The System of Professions. I apologize for the sketchy argument, but otherwise we could never get to the data.Google Scholar

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20 Curiously, the order of the two was reversed in the two countries. The United States saw giant commercial concerns from the rise of the integrated railroads in the middle of the century; administrative bureaucracies came later, with the Interstate Commerce Commission and, eventually, the Internal Revenue Service. England felt the governmental expansion into daily life first and did not see huge commercial organizations till later. See A. D. Chandler, The Visible Hand 498 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). Since much of England's capital generation took place within the firm, much of the legal work generated by American industrial expansion was absent. P. Mathias, The First Industrial Nation 383 et seq. (New York: Chas. Scribners Sons, 1969). By contrast, the Board of Trade's renewed involvement in bankruptcy proceedings dates from 1883, the Inland Revenue from 1842, and the administrations associated with welfare state policies date from the Liberal administration of 1905–16.Google Scholar

21 The English history of land registration is reviewed in B. Abel-Smith & R. Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts 59–61 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967). The American one is discussed in Q. Johnstone & D. Hopson, Lawyers and Their Work 277–84 (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967). The English lawyers' attitude towards registration is well summarized in W. Golden's statement, “I regard any approach to the registration of land as a public calamity.” 1897 APMLS 16.Google Scholar

22 L. K. Garrison, A Survey of the Wisconsin Bar, 10 Wis. L. Rev. 131–69 (1935).Google Scholar

23 Id. Since many of Garrison's indicators measure legal work done (wills written, cases begun, etc.) rather than potential legal work (population, agricultural and industrial product), one could argue that fewer lawyers were doing more work—that efficiency was rising. This interpretation seems perfectly reasonable, although the Pennsylvania data I shall later introduce convince me that much of the legal work done was done by nonlawyers.Google Scholar

24 Lazarus, I., The Economic Crisis in the Legal Profession, 1 Nat'l Lawyers Guild Q. 17, 21 (1937).Google Scholar

25 1 Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States 140 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975).Google Scholar

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27 Podmore, D., Solicitors and the Wider Community 14 (London: Heinemann, 1980). Podmore argues: “Early in this century there were probably too many solicitors for the work available and this was also the case in the 1930s,”id. at 16.1 do not know the basis for this statement, since Podmore makes no real attempt to conceptualize or measure the amount of work that was available. A cursory glance at the amount of unqualified practice in England suggests that there was plenty of work throughout the period, although solicitors may have set their prices too high to attract it. On prices, see 1914 CLS 114et seq., 1884 APMLS 22 et seq., 1886 APMLS 146 et seq.Google Scholar

28 Certain forms of jurisdictional change are not evidenced by visible conflict. Thus, R. Pennington, president of the Law Society, noted in 1892: When we met at Nottingham I ventured to call your attention to the fact that the commercial business of the City of London of a legal character had practically left the High Court; and that merchants and others, weary of the delay and not unconscious of the expense attendant on litigation in the High Court, have had recourse to a tribunal constituted by themselves. They prefer even the hazardous chances of arbitration, in which some arbitrator, who knows about as much of law as he does of theology, by the application of a rough-and-ready moral consciousness, or upon the affordable principle of dividing the victory between both sides, decides intricate questions of law and fact with equal ease. (1892 APMLS 63; see 18% APMLS 25–65 also) This trend away from legal settlement of disputes, noted as an accomplished fact by Abel-Smith & Stevens, supra note 21, in their interpretation of the modern development of English law, results in a loss of jurisdiction without obvious signs of conflict. There might have been a serious attack on arbitrators, but I have found little evidence of it. Such a change arises only if the jurisdiction from which clients depart is an absolute monopoly.Google Scholar

29 Larson, supra note 3.Google Scholar

30 There were about 75,000 managing clerks in 1939, about 5 per solicitor. Abel-Smith & Stevens, supra note 21, at 3%. Johnstone & Hopson, supra note 21, at 401, put the figure at a much lower 30,000 as of the mid-sixties. The number of articled clerks was estimated at 5,000 by J. Addison in 1891 (1891 APMLS 154), giving an indication of the ratio (1 to 3) of clerks to solicitors. The present ratio is about 1 to 2. M. Zander, The State of Knowledge about the English Legal Profession 7 (Chichester, Sussex: Barry Rose, 1984). The Solicitors Act of 1843 £ 4 limited solicitors to 2 articled clerks each (see 1908 APMLS 238 on this issue). At least one contemporary saw professional overstock early in this century, J. W. Reid (in 1908 APMLS 236–41). Also, the professional imperialism noted below might indicate a sense of needing new work. There is some indication that the managing clerks were not docile underlings. When the state's invasion of legal jurisdictions began, at least some managing clerks deserted to the enemy (1892 APMLS 96).Google Scholar

31 The figures on the Cravath firm are calculated from the roster of members printed in R. T. Swaine, The Cravath Firm and Its Predecessors (New Yosk: privately printed, 1946). On firm size generally, see W. K. Hobson, The Emergence of the Large Law Firm 1875–1930, in G. W. Gewalt, ed., The New High Priests (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984).Google Scholar

32 Auerbach, supra note 15, at 94.Google Scholar

33 L. M. Friedman, A History of American Law 528 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1973).Google Scholar

34 The internal stratification of American lawyers is discussed by Auerbach, supra note 15, and placed in the more general context of intraprofessional stratification by Abbott, supra note 12. As Auerbach points out, supra, at 95, between 1890 and 1910, the number of full-time day law schools went from 51 to 79, and night law schools from 10 to 45, a proportionately greater expansion in the lower status law schools. Indirect evidence for the pattern of too many lawyers in the lower tier is provided by the figures on professional ethics violations. Where conditions are crowded and business scarce, we would expect ethics violations as well as interprofessional conflict. The often-observed greater likelihood of ethics violations among lower tier lawyers is thus attributed to simple market forces rather than to elitist xenophobia, (as in id. at 40–44), or to situational inducement (as in J. Carlin, Lawyer's Ethics (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1966)). Indirect evidence of excess demand at the upper level is the ability of upper tier firms to shed work they found inconvenient or socially awkward. See H. W. Taft, A Century and a Half at the New York Bar 193 (New York: privately printed, 1938), on railroad negligence work. It is important to note that while firms like Cravath specialized in big business and government work, they also absorbed large quantities of routine lower tier work, at least in their early days, by virtue of their efficient divisional structure. See 1 Swaine, supra note 31, at 370.Google Scholar

35 37 & 38 Vict. ch. 68 (1874).Google Scholar

36 See 1881 APMLS32, 1887APMLS55, 1927CLS43,1929 CLS 54. The problem was equally common in America, see 1932 NYCLA 254.Google Scholar

37 1915 NYCLA 197.Google Scholar

38 There are a variety of general sources on unauthorized practice, although there is not, to my knowledge, a serious historical study of it in the United States. The major place to begin is O. M. Trelles, The Unauthorized Practice of Law: A Selected Bibliography (Toledo: University of Toledo, mimeo, 1972), although this does not cover such important early essays as G. W. Bristol, The Passing of the Legal Profession, 36 Yale L.J. 590 (1913). A short monographic account from the legal point of view is E. M. Otterbourg, A Study of the Unauthorized Practice of Law, Unauthorized Practice News, special issue, Sept. 1951. In volume five of Law and Contemporary Problems (1938), the first issue was devoted entirely to the matter, including a characteristically brilliant essay by Karl Llewellyn, The Bar's Troubles, and Poultices—and Cures? 5 Law & Contemp. Probs. 105 (1938). Among all the secondary authors I have read, Llewellyn alone recognized that the crucial question about unauthorized practice is not how to get rid of it, but what it means.Google Scholar

39 For a rare English attempt to urge conciliation and compromise, see 1909 LN 146. To the extent that interprofessional agreement or compromise ever appeared on the English scene, it took the form of a general assertion of “professional privilege” against all nonprofessionals or officials who “poached” on professional turf. See 1909 LN 335; 1910 LN 81–82; 1894 APMLS 28; 1906 CLS 82, 92, 104, 106. More commonly, the Law Society opposed the registration of other professions (1923 CLS 70–79), seemingly on the ground that it kept solicitors' general jurisdictions at their maximum extent.Google Scholar

40 1915 NYCLA 194.Google Scholar

41 The Association of the Bar Committee had 79 complaints in 1935 (1935 ABCNY 230).Google Scholar

42 See 1917 NYCLA 218; 1926 NYCLA 165; 1942 ABCNY 279.Google Scholar

43 1950 PABA 341.Google Scholar

44 My English figures are taken from the annual reports of the Council of the Law Society, where they are hidden in various places at various times, but usually are found in the annual reports of the Professional Purposes Committee. For the earlier period, see 1887 APMLS 53. My comments about American committees are based on the New York and Pennsylvania sources cited below.Google Scholar

45 Fine examples are to be found in Law Notes for 1887, 1888, and 1908.Google Scholar

46 1915 PABA 143; 1916 PABA 147; 1888 LN 200.Google Scholar

47 1922 PABA 132.Google Scholar

48 1932 PABA 92 et seq.Google Scholar

49 See, e.g., 1930 LN 333.Google Scholar

50 The haphazard pattern of dates was only partly dictated by the scarcity of materials. The Council reports were indeed available to me only from 1896.I went to the provincial meetings to get material on the earlier period, but followed those proceedings only to 1911 because they seemed to tell me nothing after that period that the Council reports did not. The Law Notes were first drawn to my attention by a pejorative reference at 1909 CLS 38 to “a monthly legal publication.” I then followed the journal from its beginning in 1882 to the thirties, although by the mid-twenties, it had come round to the position that the Council of the Law Society was actually doing a decent job of enforcement (1920 LN 242).Google Scholar

51 I have not paid much attention to the interprofessional treaties generally regarded by American lawyers as their chief achievements in relations with other professions. Partly I ignored them because the primary sources I read indicate that practitioners of those other professions ignore them as well. (At least they ignore the state-level agreements, as the history of recurrent negotiations with bankers and credit men by both the Pennsylvania and New York lawyers makes very clear). In my data, attempts at local or state-level negotiations came first, but were ultimately preempted by the American Bar Association efforts that began in the late twenties. Once the ABA became involved, the meetings and agreements related largely to legal and public jurisdiction and really had little to do with workplace reality. For the record, official meetings took place at the national level between lawyers and other nationally organized professions as follows (the source is Otterbourg, supra note 38): bankers—1934, credit men—1938, collection agencies—1937, interstate commerce practitioners—1937, real estate agents—1935, accountants—1937, insurance agents—1935, broadcasters—1941. National agreements were reached with the collection agencies in 1937, insurance adjusters in 1939, insurance agents in 1939, broadcasters in 1941, trust companies in 1941, real estate agents in 1942, and accountants in 1944. Without question, the most interesting of these relations is that with accountants in the area of income tax practice, an area with a long and violent history of court cases and confrontation. It is discussed briefly later.Google Scholar

52 I have, of course, taken much data from my general reading of the material that presents these complaints. There are also numerous problems in sampling and coding the rigorous data, but they represent a first attempt to categorize unauthorized practice, and I shall set aside measurement problems for later investigation. Among the difficulties of coding, the first is the issue of what constitutes a “mention” of unqualified practice. Is a single sentence equivalent to an entire article? There are arguments on both sides. An article signifies that an issue is important at the time, but still may refer to only one incident. In general, I have tried to count separate episodes rather than mentions per se, but the data are still not really rigorous. Second, equivalent individuals may receive different names in different places—“accountants” may be “debt collectors” in another place or time. I have rigidly taken the name used in text, with all the problems that implies. Third, sampling is a major issue. With the reports of the practice committees, sampling was not a problem. I simply read the entire report and coded what appeared there. But with other sources—the oral discussions of these reports, the papers of individuals at the provincial meetings of the Law Society, the special reports of the Council—I had to scan a large source for anything that looked relevant. Such scanning was my sampling procedure, guided by certain key words and concepts; I traced all material that mentioned either unqualified (unauthorized) practice or the name of any known competing group.Google Scholar

53 It will be seen by this listing of areas of competition that I investigated not only areas where charges of unauthorized practice were made, but also areas where the profession simply asserted its rights of jurisdiction. I hope thereby to have a truer picture of jurisdictional conflict. It should be noted that local work could easily be considered under advocacy, since virtually the only local-work issue was prosecution of criminal cases by the police. This was a hobbyhorse of Mr. Gibson of the Law Notes and was taken much less seriously by the Law Society.Google Scholar

54 The reader may notice far fewer than 400 complaints in the tables on areas of competition. Unfortunately, American sources in particular tended to accuse poachers of unspecified errors. 1 have omitted these when calculating percentages, in order to make the numbers comparable between the two countries. This procedure assumes that specified complaints constitute a representative sample of the total population, which seems reasonable.Google Scholar

55 Report from the Committee on the Survey of the Legal Profession, 23 Pa. B.A.Q. 381, 396 (1952).Google Scholar

56 Many sources testify to the rough proportionality between these complaint figures and figures on the proportions of work in the various areas. Although few sources cover the period 1880–1940 specifically, figures from both that period and others support the conclusion that these complaints are proportional to amount of practice. For example, the relative dominance of business work in cities is shown in Garrison's data, supra note 22, on available work, and appears progressively stronger in such later data as Carlin's, supra note 34, at 12, on area of specialization (45% business, 31 % land and property) and Heinz and Laumann's, supra note 14, at 40, on percentage of total legal effort (45% corporate business, 17% land and property, 9% regulatory [!]). Carlin's data on lower tier urban lawyers, supranote 13, at 118, indicates a closer balance of business with land and property (both 27%). This balance is also found in Handler's data on area of dominant practice (33% both in business and in land and property) among the lawyers of a smaller city. J. F. Handler, The Lawyer and His Community 13 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1967). The rural dominance of land and property issues is clearly shown by the Pennsylvania data cited in text, as in Graham's figures for urban specialists (52% corporate and 25% land and property) and rural ones (39% corporate and 50% land and property). W. J. Graham, Accounting in the Law School Curriculum, 7 Am. L. School Rev. 215–27 (1931). It thus seems safe to conclude that the gradient from business work to land and property work follows both status lines and urban/rural lines in the United States and that the parallel it makes with unauthorized practice claims is substantially important. In England, Miles's data on rural eighteenth-century solicitors show conveyancing as the overwhelming leader (40–47%), replacing the advocacy (23–29%), which had previously dominated. M. Miles, “Eminent Practitioners”: The New Visage of Country Attorneys, c. 1750–1800, in G. R. Rubin & D. Sugarman, eds., Law, Economy, and Society 470–503 (Abingdon, Oxon: Professional Books, 1983). A fair amount of work came from parochial and other local offices. Johnstone & Hopson, supra note 21, at 372, put the figure two centuries later at 50–60% conveyancing for solicitors as a whole, while the National Prices and Incomes Board, speaking in 1968 of the entire profession, put land and property work at about 56% of productive time, with advocacy at 25% and business matters at 17% (cited in Zander, supra note 30). The disappearance of rural collections work at the hands of banks and small debts courts is chronicled in M. Birks, Gentlemen of the Law 229–35 (London: Stevens, 1960). The English figures, too, generally parallel complaints about unqualified practice and lead one to suspect, from the endurance of collections complaints, that Birks may have predated the demise of collections as lawyers' work.Google Scholar

57 The British idea of solicitors' advice has a long history and began in an era when most of the advice concerned land and property or litigation related to the same. Miles, supra note 56, gives a solid discussion of the eighteenth-century situation. My sources often waxed rhapsodic on the matter: “The physician heals diseases of the body, the lawyer diseases of the mind. How often he is able to heal strife, especially between members of the same family” (1880 APMLS 60). “The public convenience is found to be well served by greatly extending the solicitor's duties so as to make him the confidential advisor on all family, legal and business matters, [and] the usual medium of winding up estates, and it seems possible that the entire management of all dealings with land and houses may be in the future (and I think should be) entrusted to the profession” (1887 APMLS 103). The central importance of advice was again demonstrated in solicitors' wrangles with the government. That personal connection between client and professional was central to effective advice, and advice central to effective legal functioning, were central themes of solicitors' defense against officialism in general and the Public Trustee in particular (1891 APMLS 50, 1909 APMLS 91). A good contemporary survey of solicitors' jurisdictions in the late nineteenth century, showing optimism that solicitors could expand into pleadings, is S. Learoyd, Solicitors, 1882 APMLS 129–40. As the second quote above indicates, solicitors seriously considered expanding their jurisdiction in this period, into auctioneering (1882 APMLS 141, 1886 APMLS 135–39), and into the land professions' jurisdictions generally. They were later to protest much about house agents' and estate agents' invasions. Their equally vigorous attempt to oversee all legal professions is noted at 1889 APMLS 47. A truly astonishing grandiosity is shown by “Anti-poacher,” correspondent of the Law Notes, at 1909 LN 117.Google Scholar

58 See, e.g., 1916PABA 169. That there was underlawyering in the countryside may be established by analyzing the ratio of lawyers to population in Pennsylvania. Although the rise of the new forms of practice gradually made population a less reliable indicator of demand in this period, it still serves as an effective baseline. Figures are available for the number of lawyers in 1909 (1909 PABA 512) and 1921 (1921 PABA 140–41), which may be compared with 1910 and 1920 census materials. In 1910 there were 96 lawyers per hundred thousand in Pennsylvania, and in 1920 there were 86 lawyers per hundred thousand. This decline was not equally distributed throughout the state. The median numbers of lawyers per hundred thousand in the 67 counties (by size) are as follows: Of the 12 counties in which the proportion of lawyers grew, Sullivan and Potter were smaller counties whose populations fell drastically without any lawyers leaving. Bradford was a medium county whose population fell slightly with no lawyers leaving. The others all had populations over one hundred thousand and included the Philadelphia “Mainline” counties and those west to the state capital at Harrisburg (Chester, Montgomery, Lancaster, York, and, of course, the capital county itself, Dauphin. This last was up 35% in ten years.) The proportion of lawyers in industrial Schuylkill and Northampton counties also rose, as did that in Pittsburgh (Allegheny county) and its eastern neighbor, Westmoreland. Philadelphia's 18% population growth, however, outran the 9% expansion in number of lawyers. In summary, there was a steady and large decline in the ratio of lawyers to population in the countryside and a mixture of slight decline and substantial increase in the cities. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the data is the extraordinarily high level of lawyering in the smaller counties in 1910. Perhaps land area is the better variable for that earlier period, although in 1920 physically small Greene County had 28,882 people and 60 lawyers—at 205 lawyers per hundred thousand, nearly the New York City level in the thirties.Google Scholar

59 6 Edw. 7, ch. 55 (1906).Google Scholar

60 See supra note 56.Google Scholar

61 See, e.g., 1906 CLS 79–123.Google Scholar

62 It is of course problematic to compare New York urban lawyers with Pennsylvania rural ones. Nonetheless, it is a legal fact that states are governed by uniform law as well as an empirical fact that complaints of public unwillingness to patronize lawyers seem to originate more in the countryside than in the cities.Google Scholar

63 1934PABA91.Google Scholar

64 1888 LN 146.Google Scholar

65 33 & 34 Vict. ch. 97 (1870).Google Scholar

66 Cf. 1891 LN 118.Google Scholar

67 1932 PABA 110–11.Google Scholar

68 See 1916 PABA 168.Google Scholar

69 The exact history of these groups may be followed through G. Millerson, The Qualifying Associations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964).Google Scholar

70 On rates of costs see 1884 APMLS 146–55 and sources cited supra note 27. The work of accountacy is best followed through Jones, supra note 9;but see also H. C. T. Edey & P. Panitpakdi, British Company Accounting and the Law, 1844–1900, in A. C. Littlejohn & B. Yamey, Studies in the History of Accounting 356 (New York: Arno, 1978).Google Scholar

71 1908 LN 47.Google Scholar

72 1888 LN 53 et seq.; 1889 LN 107 et seq., 205 et seq.Google Scholar

73 See 1909 LN 39.Google Scholar

74 The Law Notes at first felt that unqualified practice was largely a phenomenon of the Midland courts, then changed its mind to include the whole country. Later, it again found the Midlands the most problematic area. 1887 LN 327, 363; 1888 LN 53–55; 1889 LN 205 et seq. The intimate relation oflawyers and judges in Anglo-American courts suggests the interpretation that judges make practice restrictions to satisfy their professional cousins. Certainly American courts, with their lawyer judges, have been much more clearly on the side of lawyers than have the British ones. The celebrated cases on accountants' practice—Agran v. Shapiro, 273 P.2d 619 (1954) and In re Bercu, 69 N.Y.S.2d 730 (1948), are obvious examples. Nonlawyer tribunals in the United States have few problems with nonlawyers advocating before them. The Treasury Department itself helped overthrow the legal reasoning of the Agran and Bercu cases, which was finally demolished by Congress in 1965, Pub. L. No. 89–332, 79 Stat. 1281 (1965). See 2 J. L. Carey, The Rise of the Accounting Profession 204–57 (New York: American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, 1970). More generally, a careful review in 1948 found that only 6 of 24 major federal administrative agencies forbade nonlawyers to appear. Proposed Restriction of Law Practice Before Federal Administrative Agencies, 48 Colum. L. Rev. 120–30 (1948). Of those 6, the SEC, the FTC, and the Post Office permitted companies to appear before them represented by their officers—another lawyers' shibboleth. Representation in English administrative tribunals is equally diverse; see H. J. Elcock, Administrative Justice (London: Longmans, 1969). As administrative practice has become a larger jurisdiction, the lawyers' hold is correspondingly weaker.Google Scholar

75 1888 LN 84.Google Scholar

76 1914 LN 18.Google Scholar

77 1908 LN 47.Google Scholar

78 N. A. H. Stacey, English Accountancy 25 (London: Gee & Co., 1954); A. M. Carr-Saunders P. A. Wilson, The Professions 210 et seq. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933).Google Scholar

79 1886 APMLS 30 et seq.Google Scholar

80 For samples of opinions see 1889 APMLS41et seq., 1891 APMLS45et seq., 1893 APMLS45. The Law Society noted with some malice that neither Sir Robert Torrens nor Lord Halsbury registered his own titles. 1906 CLS 105.Google Scholar

81 1906 CLS 94–109.Google Scholar

82 6 Edw. 7, ch. 55 (1906); see, e.g., 1906 CLS 79–123, 1892 APMLS 79–114, 1894 APMLS 25–59.Google Scholar

83 1914 CLS 1 Wet seq.Google Scholar

84 1909 CLS 31.Google Scholar

85 See, e.g., 1892 APMLS 9, 42, 79–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 See 1920 NYCLA 161–71.Google Scholar

87 In keeping with the openly political character of American public life, much of the battle between the lawyers and the corporations was conducted in the courts and the legislatures, in both of which the lawyers had a strong professional presence that offset their adversaries' financial resources. The NYCLA reported annually on its legislative and legal activities, which inevitably involved the precarious defeat of these wily adversaries. The battle had the usual American features—“sinister and last-minute legislation” (1919 NYCLA 166, see also 1916 NYCLA 190–91), the use of ethics rules to deny to the opposition the legitimate use of lawyers (1917 NYCLA 222–23), protestations of disinterest (“This is not a matter of selfish interest to the Bar,” 1919 NYCLA 169; see also 1931 NYCLA 247), telegram campaigns and other organized opposition (1922 NYCLA 173, 1936 ABCNY 248), attributions of vast expenditure by the opposition (1950 PABA 530), and dramatic predictions of Armaggedon. The latter deserve substantial quotation: All the casual collection agents and advertising sharpers, whose activities your Committee has in substantial measure curtailed in this community, would welcome legislation of the kind sponsored by the Credit Men's association. The passage of such legislation would be but an opening wedge. Debtors would be oppressed, bankruptcies would increase, self-respecting members of the Bar would find their clients cajoled and implored to take other lawyers, strangers to them and to their affairs, courts would be clogged with more unnecessary litigation than exists at present, and the entire practice of the law and the administration of justice dragged down to the plane of unrestricted commercialism. (1922 NYCLA 179) At times, the bar quoted support from other professions: “Common sense, common knowledge of human nature, and common experience all teach us the eternal truth of the utterance on the Mount, that 'no man can serve two masters.' That is what trust company lawyers are vainly trying to do when they draw wills for and give legal advice to the customers of their companies” (1931 NYCLA 250–51). The lawyers were, however, “doing much to keep abreast of the progressive needs of the mercantile community” (1919 NYCLA 166), realizing that “in seeking to preserve professional standards, lawyers must not stand in the way of legitimate, cooperative endeavor upon the part of business men” (1921 NYCLA 171). The result of this was the class-biased decision that trade associations could hold lawyers on retainer, but collection agencies—competitors and employers of lower tier lawyers—could not (1921 NYCLA 171).Google Scholar

88 For a clear example see 1918 NYCLA 193.Google Scholar

89 1921 NYCLA 174–75.Google Scholar

90 1916 NYCLA 183.Google Scholar

91 1924 NYCLA 166.Google Scholar

92 1941 ABCNY 250.Google Scholar

93 1933 NYCLA 262; 1936 ABCNY 249.Google Scholar

94 1931 ABCNY 225; 1929 NYCLA 218.Google Scholar

95 Friedman, supra note 33, at 555–56, suggests that collections had been an important area of work for nineteenth-century rural lawyers. The precarious quality of collection work in the twentieth century is shown by Carlin's data, supra note 13, at 118, showing how few lawyers specialized in it. It provided some work, but not enough to make a living.Google Scholar

96 See supra note 56.Google Scholar

97 Cocks, R., Victorian Barristers, Judges, and Taxation: A Study in the Expansion of Legal Work, in G. R. Rubin & D. Sugarman, eds., supra note 56, at 445–69.Google Scholar

98 Edey & Panitpakdi, supra note 70.Google Scholar

99 I do not mention here the studies of Foucault (e.g., M. Foucauk, The Birth of the Clinic (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973)) and others like him. While these works are interesting, their level of abstraction is so great that they simply do not address the kinds of questions that interest me—why particular professions evolve in particular ways at particular times. For Foucault, all changes are attributed to grand shifts in the episteme. 1 prefer a little more differentiation.Google Scholar

100 Graham, supra note 56.Google Scholar

101 The urban-assimilation figure is lower because more urban lawyers felt they needed to know complex corporate accounting procedures than did rural ones, the latter being more likely to feel they should know about trusteeship accounting. For an English point of view, see 1883 APMLS 136,1901 LN 292–93, 1912 CLS 72–74.Google Scholar

102 See, e.g., W. E. Britton, The Teaching of Law in Collegiate Schools of Business, 6 Am. L. Sch. Rev. 201–7 (1923).Google Scholar