Defining profession in legal term.

Well, after the fiasco, you will not be surprised to hear that the ABA did not exactly agree with that other person's "commonly agreed-upon ingredients of a profession." Instead, they came by the time I had spent eight or nine months working in my first law firm job, some of the novelty had worn off, and I had started to take my status for granted.

That seems amazing to me now. I suspect that I may have fallen, myself, into one of those Black Holes of Confident Ignorance. The fact is, when you start asking what it means to be a lawyer, you hear some peculiar answers, and you might like to ponder them before charting your future.


Defining the Legal "Profession"

As they say, law and medicine are the classical, "learned'1 professions, where "learned" is pronounced alearned, the old-fashioned way. I was delighted to be a member of this honoured fraternity. Moreover, I accepted this definition of myself, at least for a while:

The commonly agreed-upon ingredients of a profession are twofold: (1) Membership [requires special] educational and licensure.... (2) Professions have the power of self-regulation. Thus, law, medicine, theology, and accounting ... are professions. But business, journalism and food preparation are not.

Maybe if I had left law school with a wealth of useful skills and knowledge, I would have been proud to believe that definition for the rest of my career. But it just didn't fit, and I became more aware of that as time went by.

I mean, what's this about "licensure requirements"? Sure, lawyers have a license to practice law. But did they have to have licenses to be professionals? If so, how did the members of "the world's oldest profession" get theirs? Do pro baseball players need a bat license?

I know it's nice, if you're a lawyer, to think that the only "real" professions are law and medicine, but that you can be generous and let your accountant friends believe that they're professionals too. But the truth is, I've known actuaries and financial analysts, and sometimes their entrance exams are tougher than the bar exams, license or no license.

Then there's the whole second half of that attorney's definition, which requires "self-regulation." I understand what it means. It means that professionals themselves get to decide who's admitted into the profession. But why should that be part of the definition? Here's a clue:

[Professions are set off from other occupations by the requirement that they be relatively independent of control by laymen who, by definition, do not have the requisite training and skills to judge the work of professionals.313

Now, that's an interesting thought. If you're a professional, they seem to be saying, and then you have to be self-regulated. Laymen won't know whether you're doing your job properly. Only professionals will be able to tell.

Take, for example, an auto mechanic. This guy spends his days scrounging around in rust, dirt, and grease. We can tell that he's no professional because you, a lay person, are fully able to get into your car when he's done and take it for a test drive. If it goes, he did it right; if it doesn't, he screwed up. This would not be possible if auto mechanics were professionals because, as we now know, "laymen ... do not have the ... skills to judge" the work of professionals. So I guess we should be glad that auto mechanics are not professionals.

Right?

Well, then, consider the example of your attorney. You go with her into the courtroom. She says some things to the judge and the other attorney. They all talk back and forth. After a while, you space out, and you remain that way until your attorney nudges you and says, Psst - let's go." You go out into the hallway and say to your attorney, "Please tell me what happened. I did catch the part about life imprisonment, but, you know, I'm only a layman, so by definition I lack the skills to judge your work."

Right?

I'm sorry, folks, but it makes me punchy to talk too long about this concept that a layman can't figure out what a professional is doing. I agree that when the professional goes into the details and starts talking about camshafts and compression motions, appellate review - and - I mean well, when s/he starts talking that way, you might lose track.

But in the end, any moron can take one look and yell, "Hey - this is not my car!"

What can I say? I have my doubts. God did not reach down and touch me with His finger when I entered Columbia Law School. I was still more or less me. What I learned about the practical side of law, for the most part, did not come from law school, but from experience.

up with this beauty:

[A profession is an] occupation whose members have special privileges, such as exclusive licensing, that are justified by the following assumptions:

1. That the client's trust presupposes that ... self-interest is overbalanced by devotion to. Serving both the client's interest and the public good, and
   
   
2. That the occupation is self-regulating - that is, organized in such a way as to assure the public and the courts that its members are competent, do not violate their client's trust and transcend their own self-interest.

In response to that definition, one lawyer asked, "If we try to see ourselves as clients see us, we shall wonder how to react to this definition. Should one applaud, sneer, laugh, or weep?" That lawyer went on to admit, sweetly, that this quote expresses "worthy goals." But I fancy that it didn't conceal his belief - and mine - that the most-needed definition is a definition of "reality," as in, "Please shut up and look at our lawyers before you try to define them."