ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Eliot Freidson's argument implies an endogenous view of professionalism; that is, neither client influence nor state intervention has any necessary relationship to professional autonomy, as long as the profession has the sole legitimate power to inspect and evaluate its work. The chapter examines the social construction of professional work during lawyer-client interactions. It focuses on the various kinds of client influence and its effects on lawyers' work, from the initial contacts with clients to the final completion of legal opinions.
