| Summary: | The thesis proposes an alternative conceptualisation of legal professional identity through consumer-based lifestyles. It examines how cultural practices of consumption and consumer-based lifestyles provide the platfom for the articulation of legal professional identity and contemporary legal practice. The thesis deploys, challenges and supplements the Maffesolian notion of neo-tribal sociality concerning the conceptualisation of legal professional identity. It conveys new meanings to legal professional identity by exposing the shift towards a consumer-based sociality. It takes into account more sensuous forms of cultural practices of consumption and consumer-based lifestyles. I so doing, it uses a wide range of methodological approaches such as analysis of legal press material and qualitative interviewing in order to expose the consumer-based aspects of the legal profession. In addition, the thesis uses the leisure-based consumption of clubbing, as a case study, an example of neo-tribal sociality that is regarded as sensuous, aestheticised and emotional but outside the scope of legal practice. It also explores the impact of clubbing on professional identity formation. Based on the study of a small group of radical lawyers, the use of clubbing reveals alternative forms of transgression, socialising and networking, which conform to the changing consumer-based ethos of contemporary legal practice. It also offers distinctive interpretations of gender, class and age in modern day legal profession. The thesis exposes the potential of consumer-based identications to add new perspectives to the conceptualisation of legal professional identity formation.
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