Varieties of Legal Intermediaries: When Non-Legal Professionals Act as Legal Intermediaries
Résumé
Legal intermediation is an emerging theoretical concept developed to grasp
the importance of the process and actors who contribute to legal
endogenization, in particular in the field of economic activities and work
governed by various public regulations. This chapter proposes to extend the
analytical category of legal intermediary to all actors who, even if they are
not legal professionals, deal on a daily basis with legal categories and
provisions. In order to deepen our understanding of these actors and their
contribution to how organizations frame legality, this chapter investigates
four examples of legal intermediaries who are not legal professionals. Based
on field surveys conducted over the past 15 years in France on employment
policy, industrial relations, occupational health and safety regulation, and
forensic economics, I make three contributions. First, the cases show the
diversity of legal intermediaries and their growing and increasingly reflexive
roles in our complex economies. Second, while they are not legal professionals
per se, to different degrees, these legal intermediaries assume roles similar to
those of legal professionals such as legislators, judges, lawyers, inspectors,
cops, and even clerks. Finally, depending on their level of legitimacy and
power, I show how legal intermediaries take part in the process of legal
endogenization and how they more broadly frame ordinary legality.
Domaines
Sociologie
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