ABSTRACT
Legal expertise is a problematic concept which, this chapter argues, is best analysed in terms of dichotomies. One such dichotomy sets conceptions of ‘legal science’, as a highly specialised scholarly accomplishment focused on legal doctrine, against vaguer ideas of lawyers’ craft-skills and wisdom as expert refinements of citizens’ everyday techniques of reasoning, problem-solving, planning, and managing affairs in the shadow of law. Another dichotomy contrasts the idea of law as a public resource and cultural possession against that of law as arcane techniques and know-how appropriated to private advantage. The familiar phenomenon of lawyer jokes gives some insight into the way legal practice is often popularly perceived. Legal expertise involves more than knowledge of elements of legal doctrine and of how to access such knowledge. Yet its further aspects are inevitably ambiguous. An idea of juristic expertise, however, represents something distinct and unique: a focus on the idea of law as a regulatory expression of values of justice, security and solidarity and an expert commitment to the well-being of this idea in the specific contexts in which the jurist works.
