New edited volume presents the first workers' inquiry of the UK legal sector
Dr Tanzil Chowdhury (Queen Mary) and Dr Jamie Woodcock (King's College London) have published a new edited book titled Legal Workers Inquiry: Worker Writing from Across the Sector in Britain. This is a joint research project between Queen Mary's Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context and the Socialist journal Notes from Below.
The publication features contributions from 15 legal workers across the UK and India, including solicitors, barristers, paralegals, caseworkers, trainees, and practitioners from law firms, chambers, third-sector organisations, and university law clinics writing about their work.
This project employs a distinctive workers' inquiry methodology inspired by Marx's Enquête Ouvrière and developed by Notes From Below. Unlike traditional ethnographies that observe workplaces from the outside, the book invites legal workers to produce knowledge about their own working conditions. This book then represents the first attempt at a workers' inquiry of the UK legal sector.
The research framework analyzes three key dimensions of class composition:
- Technical composition: How legal workers' time is managed, what they produce and under what conditions, what skills they employ, and how managerial or technological mechanisms mediate their work
- Social composition: How legal workers are socially reproduced through living conditions, family relationships, cultural practices, and access to state support
- Political composition: The extent to which legal workers self-organize for collective action and workplace improvements
The project was initially inspired by my own research exploring the relationship between law and capitalism, particularly relevant in light of the recent resurgence in Marxist legal research; but was also provoked by the question of whether legal workers merely function as agents of capital or whether they can substantively serve workers, migrants, and marginalized communities. The research further examines the potential strategic power of organized legal workers to influence broader social and economic systems.
The collection's primary aim extends beyond scholarly analysis to inform workplace organizing strategies within the legal sector. The essays—many published anonymously due to concerns about professional repercussions—offer valuable insights into organizing within a historically challenging professional environment. For example, several contributions reveal that legal workers' key antagonistic relationships exist not only with capital but also with the state.
This research contributes to both academic understanding and practical organizing efforts within the legal profession, with implications for how we conceptualize professional labour across sectors.
