ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the interaction of collective and individual models of legal professionalism in generating a new regulatory settlement for the profession as a whole. It examines the way in which both individual firms and the profession collectively have attempted to manage the competition anticipated following the establishment of the new organizational forms of Legal Disciplinary Practices (LDPs) and Alternative Business Structures (ABSs). The chapter explores the relationship between traditional collective professional projects and individualized models of advancement, which often cohere around organizations. The Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA) has the potential to disrupt jurisdictional settlements, in creating new tasks and in generating new forms of knowledge. The chapter also examines the way in which the elite corporate law firms challenged the institutional logics of profession-wide regulation post-LSA. In the years leading to the LSA 2007 the Law Society was, like other classic professional associations, deeply embedded within the institutional logics of traditional professionalism.
