One of the desirable jobs in the English legal world is that of the impresario-like figure of the barrister’s clerk. A clerk and his (are there any women?) assistants arrange the diaries of the barristers in whose chambers they are employed, in return for a cut.
Professor John Flood (no, Germanists, this is the other Professor John Flood) specializes in studying lawyers. He has studied and taught in Britain and the U.S.A.
My first major study was of barristers’ clerks, which is about to be revisited. 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. …The most recent research, funded by the German Science Foundation at Bremen University, will examine cross-border lawmaking in large law firms.
This is interesting stuff on which we must keep an eye. Professor Flood even has a weblog, Random Academic Thoughts (RATs for short).
His 1983 book on barristers’ clerks is online as a PDF and looks like an enjoyable read. The first appendix describes the experience of researching barristers’ chambers from the inside.