Professional ideals in Maltese legal practice

Abstract

In his landmark study of American lawyers, Richard Abel, (Abel: 1989) observed that structural-functionalist theories of the professions share a common basis with professional ideals themselves, since both assume that: 'if protected from outside interference, (professionals) will use their expertise for the general good' (Abel 1989: 35). As Abel (ibid.) also remarks, however, the alleged social effects of ideals of professional independence in actively inducing professionals to pursue the public interest have rarely been empirically investigated. This is the aim of this paper which draws on anthropological fieldwork carried out in Malta to examine the ways in which Maltese lawyers interpret and invoke professional ideals in the course of their legal practice and when confronting recent reforms to the court procedures for compiling evidence. In so doing, it follows the trend in the sociology of the professions to view professionalism as primarily an 'emic' or folk-concept and investigate it as such (Cant & Sharma 1998: 246; Bourdieu 1992: 42; Johnson 1972).An anthropological approach, which concentrates on the role played by professional ideals in the daily practice of lawyers, makes it possible to overcome what has been described as the: 'arbitrary separation between the sociology of law and the sociology of the legal profession' (Buchanan 1997: 364) .3 Moreover this approach highlights the complex inter-relationships between professional ideals and the specific social and cultural contexts in which they are implemented.