Faculty Member, School of Law
Professor of Law and Sociology
Thesis Title: Anatomy of Lawyering: An Ethnography of a Corporate Law Firm
Howard S Becker
John P Heinz
Arthur Stinchcombe
About
I studied law and sociolegal studies at the LSE, Warwick, and Yale Law School. I took my PhD in sociology at Northwestern University in Chicago under the supervision of Howard Becker, Jack Heinz and Art Stinchcombe. I worked at the American Bar Foundation as a research associate and Indiana University-Bloomington before joining the University of Westminster. I have been an Exxon Fellow in Ethics in the Poynter Center at Indiana University, an Academic Visitor in the Sociology Department at LSE, a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. I am currently a Visiting Professor at the Institute for the Transformation of the State at Bremen University in Germany.
My research focuses primarily on the legal profession and the globalization of law. My first major study was of barristers' clerks, which is being revisited through a Nuffield Foundation sponsored grant. This was followed by an ethnography of a large law firm in Chicago looking at the organisation of the law firm and the relationships between lawyers and clients. I have continued to study the role and position of legal elites in society, especially in the global context. Here my research has looked at the globalization of insolvency as initiated by the Maxwell insolvency, the development of the large global law firms and MDPs, and the relationships between financial institutions and their professional advisers in the context of capital markets. Recent research, funded by the German Science Foundation at Bremen University, examines cross-border lawmaking in large law firms (see www.sfb597.uni-bremen.de on links page).
My research agenda has now diversified from this course, but not away from, into the field of dispute resolution as represented by the Financial Ombudsman Service and also research into legal aid and access to justice, and, from a comparative perspective (in part for the Lord Carter Review), the ways courts allocate cases among judges.
Current research projects include: Barristers' clerks (with Avis Whyte, Law School, University of Westminster); globalization, law and lawyers (book project); the implications of Clementi.
Contact Information
University of Westminster
School of Law
4 Little Titchfield St
London W1W 7UW
+44 (0)780 170 5669
Skype: johnflood123
