Specialization and Corporation of the Legal Profession

The article, presented in a symposium held by the Istanbul Bar Association in 1995 in Antalya, tried to draw attention to two major development dynamics of the legal profession and how they cause erosion in the principles of classical profession.  While the dynamics of specialization increases the quality of the professional activities to a certain extent, it also creates a space between the concepts of right and justice.  As the lawyers transform into legal technicians through this process, this causes break of the principles of classical profession and the justice.  This also triggers a second major dynamic that is parallel to the first one and is led by the largest U.S. law firms. Corporation of law firms and at the same time forefronts the infrastructure-cost that are necessary for the execution of the profession, while it, on the other hand, causes extreme specialization and casts the ability of the lawyers away to see “legal problems as a whole”.  Throughout the time, law firms would be dragged away from the concepts of justice and rights and would rather focus on the matters such as company budget, partnership, shares, investment, turnover, profitability, which are "unrelated to justice".  Although such corporation would seem to meet the legal needs of large companies; in general, the clients would be drifted away from the classical principles of the profession, which serve as security of the rights of the clients, such as “contribution in person, execution of the services directly by the interacted and independent lawyers, non-commercial nature of legal aid, trade secrets”.  (Inside the book; Haluk İnanıcı, 21. Yüzyılda Avukatlık ve Baro, Legal Yayınları, 2008)