Lawyers’ Self-image and the Social Agenda

The social agenda, then, was located as central to their practice - the reason they entered and, thereon, that they stayed - and the formal interview data showed the prominence these lawyers attributed these values.

Crime was never well paid and ifthat's what you were interested in you would never have gone into it in the first place... it's all about the vocational aspect of it.

(Shelly, solicitor, Radcliffe and Musk, INT)

It must be obvious to new solicitors that, ‘there's no money in this, I'd rather go else­where, not go to an avenue that has no future'. The only people it is attracting are people who've got a real vocation; it is becoming a vocation. You've got to have a real passion for assisting people who need defending and need protecting from the police or the authori­ties. And, if you haven't got that passion for it, it's a no go really.

(Gordon, solicitor, Radford Hope, INT)

I don't think it is a viable career choice: you don't get paid very much and you have to do an awful lot - and that's why a lot of people turn away and move into prosecuting. I can see the attraction there. I can't see myself as a prosecutor though. I just couldn't do it! I defend people; that's what I do.

(Nadine, partner, Swining MacSage, INT)

The majority of lawyers, from Radical and Sausage Factory alike, then, earnestly identified themselves engaged in a vocation, doing something essential and making

a difference. This relied on a traditional professional evocation: that they could use their specialist knowledge to fulfil a socially important role (Eraut, 1994: 223-25), imbuing the assumption that public service and professional status were linked (Abbey and Boon, 1995: 263).

Rationalisation is one of Freud's (2009: 3-4) defence mechanisms: manipula­tions of perception designed to protect individuals from anxiety. These entailed means to deny or distort reality, and were originally organised by Sigmund's daugh­ter, Anna (Freud, 1993: 42-50) and later classified by Vaillant (1992). One of their chief functions is to shield the ego from the pain or displeasure presented by an external threat - a situation with which an individual would struggle to cope. In this manner, some element of distortion of reality is utilised in order that the individu­al's self-image can be maintained. Rationalisation is a ‘disavowal defence', whereby the ego logically justifies a past decision that was made in a different state of mind; it represents a fallacy of reasoning, of which the individual is typically unaware (Vaillant, 1992: 256). The individual avoids dealing with the true explanation behind their actions, devising reassuring or self-serving, though fundamentally incorrect, explanations.

In the case of these lawyers, the true explanation might be that they were engaged in legally aided defence because they were simply not good enough for other areas of law. The lesser remuneration available reflected this area's position on the lowest rung of the profession; as such, it was not one meriting high status.

However, these lawyers frequently talked about money and in particular, what they did or did not earn. They decried their own remuneration, though the £25,000 pa matched that of the average wage in the United Kingdom (Office for National Statistics, 2009: 1). Even at this figure, they earned more than welders, carpenters, joiners, driving instructors or construction workers, all of whom had useful and necessary skills and trades that we all (lawyers included) rely on. They also trumped members of another of the original professional triumvirate, clergymen. More so, law students are said to earn an average of £245,000 more than non-graduates over the course of their careers, second only to those who study medicine (Faulkner, 2010). Even more significant than pure earnings, though, is the rate of return on a qualification - rather crudely reducing higher education to economic practice. While medical students earn more, they have to study for longer than those com­pleting law degrees. This ensures that the latter offers the best ‘investment’, as they see a rate of return of 17.2 per cent compared with the average of 12.1 per cent (Faulkner, 2010).

I was out all night. The amount we get paid for it, pah - you wouldn’t get a plumber out in the middle of the night for the kind of money they pay me. It’s a disgrace.

(Bob, solicitor, Radford Hope, IC)

This lament can also be seen in the following interview excerpt:

I do enjoy doing crime, but not half as much as I used to. You’ve never made a lot of money doing crime. You would never go into crime for the money, but you used to be able to make a reasonable living and do a reasonable job for the client. But now you’re not paid very much, and a lot of people - I don’t go to police stations in the middle ofthe night - but people working crazy hours, 60-odd hours a week, for a very poor pay, earning less than their plumber or their electrician who hasn’t studied, got a degree, and hasn’t got people’s liberty in their hands and that depresses me.

(Norma, solicitor, Radford Hope, INT)

Clearly, then, financial remuneration was a prime concern. Accordingly, there appears to be ample reason to suppose that, contrary to the majority of sentiments expressed by lawyers in the interview data, financial considerations were a motivat­ing factor in some lawyers entering the profession. Certainly, it presented a wage that most in society would gladly take. While the majority of the interviews saw the lawyers profess that they had always been interested in crime, it might be consid­ered a significant minority that acknowledged that they simply entered the law in general, and only later came to specialise in crime. A senior partner, Dale, from Swining MacSage was one such lawyer:

Was it crime from the start? Umm, no. I did have quite an interest in tax.

(Dale, senior partner, Swining MacSage, INT) Those with stories akin to Dale appeared reflective of the aforementioned Law Society cohort study (Duff et al, 2000). Earlier research, by McDonald (1982: 270­71) and Sherr and Webb (1989: 232-33) suggests that social agenda is not a major pull-factor in terms of law student motivation compared with financial considera­tions. This prompts Boon et al (2001: 591-94) to conclude their assessment of the six-year longitudinal cohort study by questioning the very viability of this social agenda in the face of economics. Reflecting on these sources, Boon (2005: 236-38) directly juxtaposes these altruistic claims with more selfish motivations. In so doing, Boon (2005: 236) considers that, ‘practical and selfish aspirations came far above altruistic aspirations'.

These surveys showed that legal qualifications were most likely to be sought with an eye towards employment concerns. Public service desires lag behind both indi­vidual and vocational priorities as relevant variables.

I had to pick a career. I knew I was too squeamish to be a doctor, so I just applied for law courses. It was respectable and well paid; or so I thought!

(Eileen, solicitor, Radcliffe and Musk, INT)

I took law because it seemed quite a versatile career that could be used as a gateway to dif­ferent things. I didn't have a clear idea at that point that I wanted to go into the legal profession.

(Thomas, partner, Swining MacSage, INT) By this view, many lawyers entered the legal profession because it represented a sensible career choice; financial considerations were to the fore.

It is, though, well established that criminal legal aid carries lesser remuneration than many other branches of the law. As the previous cohort study considers law students in general, perhaps of greater relevance is the research by Sommerlad and Wall (1999) which focuses only on legally aided lawyers. Their results identify the social agenda significantly trumping financial concerns as a motivating factor. However, the data provided by Sommerlad and Wall (1999) faces the same prob­lem as that in the first section of this chapter. Their lawyers are already engaged in legal aid so might simply have been rationalising the professional situation in which they found themselves. By contrast, studies of law student aspirations are free of this problem, as they have yet to take any particular professional path beyond choosing law academically.

This returns us to the notion that lawyers were engaged in a lower waged area of the law because they were not able to do anything more lucrative. Lawyers might have missed out on obtaining training contracts from commercial firms; there is intense competition for these places so that only the ablest students from the most prestigious institutions can be successful - and even they face a challenge (Shiner, 2000: 106-17). In this research, no solicitor offered academic inadequacies as influ­encing their entry into this branch of the profession. However, one clerk, who had been practising longer than most of the solicitors, did go some way to recognising these factors in her own career path:

I got into the job because I was a massive under achiever and I failed my A-levels fairly dramatically. I went to rather too many parties so there were entertainment issues, whereby I didn't quite deal with revision, exams. Anyway, I fell into working at the County Court which made me realise that the only way I was ever going to get a half-decent job was to do some exams as I was working, which meant either banking, accountancy or law. So I started doing my course and got a job. Originally, I was going to do matrimonial law as I could divorce someone with my eyes shut, but that didn't happen so I got offered a job doing crime. Now, I knew absolutely nothing about crime, but in those days, back in the 1980s I started here, the requirements for legal advisers were very open and easy and I ended up being taken on but I'm not quite sure I would have employed myself - on my first day here, I hadn't a clue what the difference was between the Magistrates' Court and the Crown Court. I knew even less than the average person on the street knows. I started here and I had absolutely no knowledge as to what crime law was all about.

(Evelyn, police station clerk, Swining MacSage, INT)

While no lawyer attributed their own presence in this lower paid area of law to their own limitations, several acknowledged this was a factor inherent in legal aid remu­neration - one increasingly prevalent as the system was squeezed tighter. As such, while lawyers were loath to see themselves as deficient, the interviews showed that 25 out of the 35 - from all firms - believed criminal legal aid attracted lawyers who were not good enough to find employment elsewhere. They identified that other solicitors might be practising because they lacked the talent to engage in better remunerated branches. In the participant observation, lawyers were quick to point out solicitors who they saw as lacking, for example:

There just aren't many decent young solicitors coming through. You can see them here, a couple ofthem, just not up to it. It makes me sad to see the standards drop like this.

(Leo, senior partner, Radcliffe and Musk, IC)

That solicitor there - he's one of that new breed of civil servant lawyers. It's just a job to them and it shows; they don't have the skills to pull it off, lack that special something which can really help a client.

(Dale, senior partner, Swining MacSage, IC)

It's a little bit depressing to see the other lawyers around here; you know they only do it because they're too useless to do anything else. Legal aid is becoming a graveyard for the also rans.

These views were later substantiated in the formal interviews as in the following quotes:

I think the quality of representation will be affected by legal aid cuts. I've seen a few young people that don't seem to have the fire in their belly that we had when we were that age. It's not quite the same. Whether they get to the soul ofthe client and understand why that person did what they did and manage to put that across in language that will make the magistrate sympathetic, that's another thing altogether.

(Norma, solicitor, Radford Hope, INT)

The reality is we're not getting the best service from the criminal defence advocates, which just doesn't attract the best people now. Which is very sad.

(Gordon, solicitor, Radford Hope, INT)

I think you will find that it will be dumbed down - you will not get the people coming in. You might get the odd one, who is completely dedicated to the idea but I think the majority will be just people who, frankly, can't cut it in any other area of law. I won't name names but there are some youngsters I have seen around recently who I think, you know, this was clearly the last resort for you; you're not a good lawyer, you're not a good advocate, you've been around for a fair old time but you're still not a good advocate. They're still not a good lawyer and they never will be and it's just because they don't have the ability. Now, I think this will just become the melting pot for the mediocre, I really do.

(Mike, senior partner, Radison and Muddle, INT)

The readiness of these lawyers to identify others engaging in this area because they could not practise elsewhere works to highlight their rationalisation. Most lawyers were aware that their branch of the profession was populated by supposed ‘lesser lights'. However, they would not see this in themselves. Instead, they protected their own ego from the threat posed by the valuation that lesser remuneration placed on them, and thus maintained their self-image. The financial indictors may have pointed to criminal legal aid being constituted by a cadre of lesser profession­als, without high status, but these lawyers were shielded from seeing that in themselves.

Whether considered a genuine conviction or an act of rationalisation, the social agenda seems to have operated to safeguard these lawyers from the judgement implicit in their lesser remuneration. Despite this valuation, it gave them a claim to assert their worth as professionals, premising their high status on fulfilling a soci- etally important role. However, affording this significance to the social agenda seems every bit as problematic as remuneration was in maintaining the self-image of these lawyers. While the association with the type of clients that the social agenda demanded might have been supposed to elevate them, it appears that others actu­ally saw it to have relegated them further.