1 A note on the meaning of “ethnographic” is in order here. Harold C. Conklin, the Yale anthropologist, defines an ethnographer as:Google Scholar

See Harold C. Conklin, Ethnography, in 5 David L. Sills, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences 172–73 (New York: Macmillan & Free Press, 1968).Google Scholar

2 See Brian Abel-Smith & Robert Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts: A Sociological Study of the English Legal System 1750–1965, at 222, 453 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

3 1 Royal Commission on Legal Services, Final Report, Cmnd. No. 7648, at 24 table 2.3 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1979) [hereinafter cited as Benson Report].Google Scholar

4 Id., vol. 2, at 489, £ 16.105.Google Scholar

5 In England and Wales, unlike in the United States, law is a first-degree subject. See 1 Benson Report, supra note 3, at 609, £ 38.13.Google Scholar

6 In order to qualify to be called to the bar, a student must ordinarily eat 36 dinners at the hall of his Inn. Nowadays, eating dinners rarely adds to the student's education, but it is a necessary chore. The origins of this ritual lie in the Middle Ages, when the Inns of Court were responsible for the education of lawyers. See 1 Michael Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest: A Study in Restrictive Practices (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968), and 1 Benson Report, supra note 3, at 641, 13949.Google Scholar

7 Pupillage is a 12-month unpaid apprenticeship undertaken at the close of the academic and postgraduate vocational training. Any barrister who has been called to the bar for a minimum of five years may take on a pupil. The pupil reads his pupilmaster's papers, follows him to court, and occasionally does some drafting for the pupilmaster. See infra note 29. See also Robert Hazell, Pupillage, in Robert Hazell, ed., The Bar on Trial (New York: Quartet, dist. in U.S. by Horizon Press, 1978).Google Scholar

8 W. W. Boulton, A Guide to Conduct and Etiquette at the Bar of England and Wales 58 (6th ed. London: Butterworths, 1975), says: “[A] barrister must not practice unless he is a member of professional chambers” and has “the services of the clerk who is the clerk of the chambers and the use of the chambers' administration and facilities to the extent necessary for the proper conduct of his practice” (note omitted). At present the average number of barristers per set of chambers is 14. These would typically include barristers ranging in seniority from Queen's Counsel to newly admitted juniors. (See 1 Benson Report, supra note 3, at 453 table 33.6.).Google Scholar

9 List officers are civil servants employed by the courts to arrange the schedules of cases to be tried. They negotiate with barristers' clerks to find the most convenient date for counsel, expert witnesses, etc., to attend the hearing. In London, clerks attend these negotiations daily, and as a consequence of their close working arrangements with list officers, clerks spend substantial amounts of time “cultivating” list officers.Google Scholar

10 My conception of fixer is based upon Jeretny Boissevain's characterization of a broker whom he describes as “a professional manipulator of people and information who brings about communication for profit.” See Jeremy Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions 198 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1974).Google Scholar

11 See Boulton, supra note 8, and see infra note 42.Google Scholar

12 Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6 (also now see his Legal Services for the Community (London: Temple Smith, 1978)); Quintin Johnstone & Dan Hopson, Jr., Lawyers and Their Work: An Analysis of the Legal Profession in the United States and England (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967); Abel-Smith & Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts, supra note 2; and id., In Search of Justice: Society and the Legal System (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1968).Google Scholar

13 A. E. Bowker, Behind the Bar (2d ed. London: Staples Press, 1951). Also see his A Lifetime with the Law (London: W. H. Allen, 1961). Another rare memoire is Sydney Aylett, Under the Wigs: The Memoires of a Legal King Maker (London: Eyre Methuen, 1978).Google Scholar

14 At the time of the research, two government commissions had received evidence from the Barristers' Clerks' Association (B.C.A.), viz., First Interim Report of the Committee on County Court Procedures, Cmd. No. 7648 (1948); Final Report of the Committee on Supreme Court Practice and Procedure, Cmd. No. 8878 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1953). Later the B.C.A. submitted evidence to the Royal Commission on Legal Services. The following reports are from commissions and committees that one would have thought would have taken evidence from the B.C.A. but did not were: Report of the Interdepartmental Committee on the Business of the Criminal Courts, Cmnd. No. 1289 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1961); Royal Commission on Assizes and Quarter Sessions, 1966–69, Cmnd. No. 4153 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1969) [hereinafter cited as Beeching Commission Report]; Monopolies Commission, A Report on the General Effect on the Public Interest of Certain Restrictive Practices So Far as They Prevail in Relation to the Supply of Professional Services, Cmnd. No. 4463 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1970) [hereinafter cited as Monopolies Commission Report]; Report of the Committee on Legal Education, Cmnd. No. 4595 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1971); Report of the Committee on the Distribution of Criminal Business, Cmnd. No. 6323 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1975); Monopolies and Mergers Commission Report on the Two-Counsel Rule, H.C. 512 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1976); Commission Report on Restrictions on Advertising by Barristers, H.C. 559 (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1976).Google Scholar

15 Personal communication from A. D. M. Oulton of the Lord Chancellor's Office.Google Scholar

16 Beeching Commission Report, supra note 14, at 39.Google Scholar

17 Monopolies Commission Report, supra note 14.Google Scholar

18 Personal communication from the Clerk to the Faculty of Advocates.Google Scholar

19 Final Report of the Committee on Supreme Court Practice, supra note 14.Google Scholar

20 One of the most concise and elegant theoretical statements on professionalism is Terence J. Johnson, Professions and Power (London: Macmillan, 1972), though it ignores the symbolic aspects of professionalism, for which see Everett C. Hughes, Men and Their Work (Glencoe, 111.: Free Press, 1958), and Howard S. Becker, The Nature of a Profession, in his Sociological Work: Method and Substance, ch. 6 (London: Allen Lane, Penguin Press, 1970).Google Scholar

21 Abel-Smith & Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts, supra note 2, at x, 239 n. 4, 410 nn. 4 & 6.Google Scholar

22 Personal communication from Senior Master Jacob of the Queen's Bench Division.Google Scholar

23 Since the early 1960s Michael Zander, professor of law at the London School of Economics and Political Science has been a critic of the English legal profession and legal system and was, in part, instrumental in bringing the Royal Commission on Legal Services into existence in 1976. He submitted over 700 pages of evidence to the commission. His most trenchant statement is found in Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6.Google Scholar

24 Gregory P. Stone, Appearance and the Self, in Arnold M. Rose, ed., Human Behavior and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach 86, 100 (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1962) (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

25 Id. at 101 (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

26 Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6, at 86.Google Scholar

27 This extract and the others following are taken from my fieldnotes.Google Scholar

28 Jeremy Bugler, NCOs of the Law, 91 n.s. New Statesman, Mar. 5, 1976, at 286.Google Scholar

29 See 1 Benson Report, supra note 3, at 610, 138.16,” in the period between 1960 and 1970, the work of the Bar increased considerably. In the same period its numbers did not increase in the same proportion. The effect was to reverse the traditional situation and so provide a ready supply of work for newcomers to the Bar. For this reason, the Senate introduced, in 1965, the rule that no barrister should accept a brief until he had completed six months' pupillage … .” Also see id. at 619, £ 38.41.Google Scholar

30 William Foote Whyte, Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum 357 (2d ed. enl. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).Google Scholar

31 Cf. Garfinkel's experiment in disruption to display the normal techniques and rules of interaction in Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliff, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1967).Google Scholar

32 Sydney G. Newland, The Barrister's Clerk 5 (London: Barristers' Clerks' Association, 1971).Google Scholar

33 Id. at 2.Google Scholar

34 Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6, at 86.Google Scholar

35 Bugler, supra note 28.Google Scholar

36 Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6, at 86.Google Scholar

37 Nor did the Benson Commission; see 2 Benson Report, supra note 3, £ 14.Google Scholar

38 Cf. Bill Bottomley, in Colin Bell & Sol Encel, eds., Inside the Whale: Ten Personal Accounts of Social Research (Pushcutters Bay, Australia: Pergamon Press, 1978), who reported similar experiences. I should also point out that the clerks did not appear adversely affected by the drink.Google Scholar

39 Barristers' Clerks' Association, Methods Manual for Counsel's Clerks (London: Barristers' Clerks' Association, 1970).Google Scholar

40 The Benson Commission also had difficulty in counting barristers' clerks, stating there were approximately 265 senior clerks and 325 junior clerks. See 2 Benson Report, supra note 3, £ 14, 114.3 and 114.52.Google Scholar

41 Id. at £ 14 table 14.7.Google Scholar

42 A senior clerk who refused to accept a reduction in his commission was dismissed. He took the matter to an industrial tribunal for unfair dismissal. But the tribunal ruled on a preliminary point stating that barristers' clerks were self-employed contractors, not employees. Thus he could not claim for unfair dismissal. See Barristers: One Man and His Clerk, Economist, May 20, 1978, at 26.Google Scholar

43 See Helena Kennedy, Women at the Bar, in Hazell, supra note 7, at 148.Google Scholar

44 Nan Wilson, The Sociology of a Profession: The Faculty of Advocates (doctoral thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1965). And see her The Scottish Bar: The Evolution of the Faculty of Advocates in Its Historical Social Setting, 28 La. L. Rev. 235 (1968), and The Professional Community: The Edinburgh Advocates, 23 Rec. A.B. City N.Y. 174 (1968).Google Scholar

45 See Morrison, Charles, Munshis and Their Masters: The Organization of an Occupational Relationship in the Indian Legal System, 31 J. Asian Stud. 309 (1972); and his Clerks and Clients: Paraprofessional Roles and Cultural Identities in Indian Litigation, 9 Law & Soc'y Rev. 39 (1974).Google Scholar

46 The establishment of the Royal Commission on Legal Services and my fieldwork coincided. Also see note 23 supra.Google Scholar

47 Ned Polsky, Hustlers, Beats and Others 135 (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1967) (emphasis in original).Google Scholar

48 Kong-Ming, Peter New, The Personal Identification of the Interviewer, 62 Am. J. Soc. 213 (1956); John M. Johnson, Doing Field Research (New York: Free Press, 1975).Google Scholar

49 John Madge, The Tools of Social Science: An Analytical Description of Social Science Techniques 137 (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Anchor Books, 1965).Google Scholar

50 As Nan Wilson pointed out, research is more easily conducted if the subjects are concentrated in a single area. See Wilson, Sociology of a Profession, supra note 44. The English Bar is not quite as compact and immobile as the Faculty of Advocates, but the majority of barristers are still to be found in the Inns of Court in London. Of the four Inns, Gray's Inn is the least densely populated, supposedly because of its great distance from the Law Courts. Lincoln's Inn houses most of the chancery lawyers. And the Temple, Inner and Middle, contains the greater part of the common law bar. I concentrated on the Temple for two reasons, namely, the officers of the Barristers' Clerks' Association were there, and it was where I was fortunate to make my initial entry. Thus the Temple was not a random choice in a statistical sense, but the fieldwork did include Lincoln's Inn and some chambers outside the Inns of Court.Google Scholar

51 Charles Lamb, The Old Benchers of the Inner Temple, in Essays of Elia 94, 101 (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1909).Google Scholar

52 See Zander, Lawyers and the Public Interest, supra note 6, and Abel-Smith & Stevens, Lawyers and the Courts, supra note 2, and id., In Search of Justice, supra note 12.Google Scholar

53 Everett C. Hughes (The Sociological Eye (Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1970)), quoted in Jack D. Douglas, Investigative Social Research: Individualized and Team Field Research 43 (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Russell Sage, 1976).Google Scholar

54 John Flood, Barristers' Clerks (paper, University of Warwick, 1977) (on file at Yale Law School library).Google Scholar