Since the Brexit referendum, UK environmental NGOs have fought hard to shape the post-Brexit environmental law landscape. In this chapter, we argue that notwithstanding some clear weaknesses in the general place of legal expertise in UK environmental groups, the sector leant heavily on that expertise in advocacy around Brexit-environment, and with some success. Our research reveals three key weaknesses in legal expertise for advocacy in environmental NGOs: first, its scarcity; second, a patchy understanding of what it can do for a movement (beyond litigation); and finally, its lack of prominence in NGO leadership and strategic thinking. We identify two closely related features of the Brexit context that contribute to explaining both the insider, advocacy focus of environmental groups at this time, as well as the apparent paradox of a heavy use of legal expertise in that advocacy. First, political opportunities made demands on, and provided particular openings for, insider legally expert advocacy. This, we argue, created a specific set of what we call hybrid political-legal opportunities. Second, the post-referendum landscape created a space for intensive collaborative activity.

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’.

The chapter scrutinises the formation of a new type of legal expertise at the crossing between public and private law in France. It provides a sociological mapping of the blurring of ‘private-public’ divide through the rise of Parisian law firms and their historical repositioning in the French field of power as key brokers and a central crossroad in-between State and market actors. Through an in-depth analysis of more than two hundred individual career paths of leading politicians and high civil servants that have circulated from the various branches of the public sector (government offices, parliamentary committees, regulatory agencies, courts, etc.) to large corporate law firms (the so-called pantouflage), it offers a sociological assessment of the unprecedented blurring of the ‘public-private’ divide that has been taking place over the past two decades.

This contribution investigates the role of legal advisors in lobbying and advocacy work of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Law is an important tool for NGOs, and many of them employ legal or ‘law and policy’ advisors. These advisors deal with a range of matters, providing strategic advice and legal support for community-based outreach work and engaging in litigation and policy dialogue with government and their agencies. Through a set of expert interviews conducted among legal advisors working in Brussels and Helsinki based NGOs, this contribution sheds light on the hitherto unknown group of legal experts. It is interested in how legal advisors see their own role in lobbyng and advocacy work that NGOs do and how they construct and shape the notion of public interest in their activities, trying to remain faithful to what they see as a “lawyer’s” role. At the same time, the contribution also provides information about new roles that lawyers have in modern societies and the increasing significance of legal expertise in lobbying and advocacy activities.

This chapter examines the impact of the emergence of a unified empire on the ideas about honor and shame that defined the social elite that filled state offices, and distinguished them from elite competitors. First, scholars redefined the relation between the ruler and his officials, trying to forge them into a united body where the honor of each party depended on the honor of the other. Second, people increasingly granted status to several forms of intellectual expertise. Masters of the classical language received positions and increasing prestige for their skills. Similarly, titularly low officials who mastered legal texts secured considerable power, and claimed a higher status. Finally, Sima Qian claimed the right, patterned on Confucius, to pass judgments that honored or shamed those about whom he wrote. This developed the tension between scholars and the ruler that had emerged in the Warring States. The chapter also examines how the increasing merger of intellectuals and powerful families was reflected in tensions between the claims of scholarship and careers, and devotion to the family. Han authors carried forward the Warring States discourse distinguishing a true elite that worked for honor or morality, while rejecting conventional devotion to material wealth.