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A SHİFT TO A POST-STRUCTURALİST ANALYSİS OF THE LEGAL PROFESSİON 1. Still a model of market control An approach that has dominated the contemporary literature on the legal profession is that of Abel (1986, 1988, 1989), whose market control thesis tias become the 'dominant paradigm' for examining lawyers (Paterson, 1994, p. 302). Abel continues with this market control thesis in his latest work English Lawyers between Market and State: The Politics of Professionalism (2003). To focus his contemporary account of lawyers in England and Wales, Abel applied a market orientation, which highlighted the extent to which the profession is currently tempered by competition. In the past the profession had been adept at avoiding competition (Abel, 1989), achieved largely by projecting a service ideal ideology, which secured State protection from competition in return for service to the client (Parsons, 1978). This protective system no longer appties, with "market pressures increasingty penetrating (the) sanctuary of the tegal profession" (Abel, 1989, p. 291). Abel adopts Larson's Weber-derived market control theory to examine how the legal profession deals with competition (Larson, 1977; Weber, 1954). Under this theory, all occupations under capitalism are ompelled to seek control over their markets (Abel, 1986). In pursuing this market orientation perspective, Abel argues that the economic dynamic of the market moulds behavioural patterns, with external economic and market forces determining the behaviour ofthe legal profession.
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