The Working Culture of Legal Aid Lawyers: Developing a ‘Shared Orientation Model’

Emma Cooke

doi:10.1177/09646639211060809

Abstract

This paper critically explores the working culture of legal aid lawyers and develops a novel ‘Shared Orientation’ model to better understand contemporary legal aid work and its workers. Set within a context of changing professional identities, a shrinking industry and financial constraints, the paper draws on ethnographic and interview data conducted with a high-street firm, multiple courtrooms and a law centre. It examines the emerging relevance and applicability of this new conceptual lens, refocusing the gaze on working life in fissured legal workplaces. It is argued that the ‘Shared Orientation’ model upholds multiple functions. Firstly, it captures the cultural heterogeneity of the legal aid profession, across civil-criminal and solicitor-barrister remits alike. Secondly, the model functions as a form of cohesive coping mechanism in response to the changing professional identity of the legal aid lawyers. Moreover, the ‘Shared Orientation’ offers unity as a way of functioning in an otherwise fragmented profession through its preservation of working culture ideals.

Highlights

The world of the legal aid lawyer holds a substantial amount of appeal for researchers, as a unique and complex occupational group which sits on the peripheries of the wider lawyering profession, the criminal justice system, the voluntary sector, and the welfare state
This paper has presented a new model to better understand the working culture of legal aid lawyers in light of this
The shared orientation model offers unity as a way of functioning in an otherwise fragmented profession through its preservation of working ideals, it captures the cultural heterogeneity of the work, and acts as an informal coping mechanism

Summary

Introduction

The world of the legal aid lawyer holds a substantial amount of appeal for researchers, as a unique and complex occupational group which sits on the peripheries of the wider lawyering profession, the criminal justice system, the voluntary sector, and the welfare state. As the occupation becomes increasingly hollowed out, the ‘new’ legal aid lawyer faces a more demarcated working environment Deep engagement with their clients and broader social justice orientations still allows them to ‘make do’– in a profession whereby they are otherwise marginalised professionally in comparison to their private counterparts – in spite of everincreasing restrictions (Zaloznaya and Nielsen, 2011: 919). While it may be difficult to speak of a singular, rigid and taken-for-granted culture which applies to all legal aid work, it is likely that different lawyers across both civil and criminal remits, spanning a variety of workplaces, may form ‘subcultures’, or their work may align in some way or form. Rather than to trying to shoehorn existing blanket models of occupational culture, this paper proposes a new conceptual lens in which to better understand the ways in which the dynamics of culture and work fluidly interact within the legal aid profession

Methodology

Conclusion

Findings

The empirical research was conducted as part of my PhD study