ABSTRACT
Many law firms are inviting investment from non-lawyers and several brand names have entered the legal service marketplace. This has revolutionised the availability of legal advice to both the private and business sectors although not without criticism. With regard to capitalist, market-based system, law provides and maintains an essential framework within which such business activity can take place, and without which it could not operate. One source of customary practice that undoubtedly did find expression in the form of law was business and commercial practice. The common law has been romantically and inaccurately described as ‘the law of the common people of England’. In fact, the common law emerged as the product of a particular struggle for political power. As a consequence of the foregoing, there has been, even in the English legal system, a move away from the over-reliance on the literal approach to statutory interpretation to a more purposive approach.
