Lawyers and Vampires: Cultural Histories of Legal Professions

This is the first book that directly addresses the cultural history of the legal profession. An international team of scholars canvasses wide-ranging issues concerning the culture of the legal profession and the wider cultural significance of lawyers, including consideration of the relation to cultural processes of state formation and colonization. The essays describe and analyze significant aspects of the cultural history of the legal profession in England, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Finland. The book seeks to understand the complex ways in which lawyers were imaginatively and institutionally constructed, and their larger cultural significance. It illustrates both the diversity and the potential of a cultural approach to lawyers in history.