We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
from Part II - In-House Legal Expertise
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 October 2022
How is legal expertise deployed in an institution such as the Westminster Parliament? The sociology of the legal profession suggests that the client plays a major role in how legal expertise is understood and used. In the case of Westminster, this is somewhat problematic because Parliament as a ‘client’ is not easily pinned down: it is multicentred-institution and parliamentarians; and it is an intensely political arena. The result is that there is a wide variety of sources of legal expertise (this chapter prefers the term ‘legal support’) for Parliament and parliamentarians, and no one source has a monopoly over legal support, save where the issue relates to institutional matters. The ultimate argument of the chapter is that the processes of seeking and making use of legal support is not that different from the way that legal support is sought and made use of in society more broadly. The client determines when they will seek legal support, and what use they make of it. In practice, then, parliamentarians make use of known sources first to understand legal issues (which may come from inside or outside Parliament); only rarely will they seek or need to seek formal ‘legal advice’.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
