Publication Date

2021

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

Sturm College of Law

Keywords

Professional identity, Corporate law practice, Chinese civic professionalism, Legal education, Empirical legal studies, Law and society

Abstract

Through their professional education and training, new lawyers are generally encouraged to adopt a civic vision of professional identity. This article explores convergences and diverges in how new lawyers entering an increasingly globalized legal profession conceive of their civic roles in different national contexts. In particular, I examine corporate lawyers-in-training in the U.S. and China, drawing on interviews and a cross-cultural identity mapping method to compare their accounts of the lived experiences of civic professionalism. I find that professional identity formation in the U.S. sample is largely marked by role distancing and a sense of constrained public-interest expression. In contrast, Chinese respondents generally identified strongly with their civic roles, while framing their public contributions in pragmatic, state-aligned terms. I conclude with a comparative analysis of young lawyers’ bottom-up efforts to expand their civic impact.

Publication Statement

This article has been published in a revised form in Law and Social Inquiry, as John Bliss, Becoming Global Lawyers? A Comparative Study of Civic Professionalism, 46(3) LAW & SOC. INQUIRY 1 (2021), available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/law-and-social-inquiry/article/abs/becoming-global-lawyers-a-comparative-study-of-civic-professionalism/2E2D5B69E2D0D559F44E77E85DF68FB6. This version is free to view and download for private research and study only. Not for re-distribution or re-use.

Rights Holder

John Bliss

Provenance

Received from author

File Format

application/pdf

Language

English (eng)

Extent

27 pgs

File Size

745 KB

Publication Title

Law & Social Inquiry

Volume

46

First Page

1

Last Page

27

Previous Versions

Oct 28 2021

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