Strategies to Produce a Professional Monopoly

Strategies to Produce a Professional Monopoly

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Before we can discuss the way that the legal profession as attempted, either successful or not, to create a monopoly the definition of what a professional is should be looked at. A profession, according to the functionalists, is first serves the needs of the public's best interest. To the functionalists there is no professional bank robber. A profession has a strong community or essentially by blocking out competition. The last and most important idea of professionalism is self-regulation. It is the ultimate goal of any profession to be self-regulated. Here is where we can observe that professions do not establish a monopoly, yet the term profession itself means to monopolize the work place. According to people of any profession theory will argue that this is a neccesity. The only people, professionals argue, that can judge or regulate the in this case lawyers would be expert lawyers. It would not make sense to have professionals from other areas such as blacksmiths, doctors, electricians, etc., regulate the legal profession.

There are two sides to this argument that the legal profession claims. Though the self regulation is good because they can now set standards for the profession and high ones at that, on the other hand they will be less likely to punish on of their own because it makes the profession look bad. This argument of whether it is in the public's best interest remains to be seen and self-regulation is in a constant struggle to prove so.

The strategies employed by those who wished to keep the legal profession just that a profession, for which I already showed means monopoly, was by first establishing barriers for prospective lawyers to cross. In other words, guidelines that forbid any citizen to just claim divine lawyership becoming a lawyer without the proper education or knowledge. The first step to achieve this was by forming an American Bar Association (ABA), which was accomplished in 1878. Before this there were local Bar Associations, which had neither real ties nor any organization to begin to regulate the practices of lawyers. The Bar Examinations, which are a form of self-control, began to be used as a tool. The ABA struggled to get states to accept this as the entry port in to the legal profession. This is one way in which the profession can regulate who becomes lawyers, the Association would regulate the number of lawyers in the industrial states for there were already a number of lawyers, and they want to keep competition down.