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PAGE: 30 The future of the professions a leading accountancy, law, or consulting firm would find a huge emphasis on strong financial performance. Discussions of conflicts of interest, for instance, often betray a keener interest in profitable work than in delivering genuinely independent advice to clients.71 Many partners in professional firms invariably now insist that they are running businesses, that profit per partner is the main index of success, and that the number of hours charged should be the basis of reward for employees. When profits trump clients, when the incentives and reward systems of professional businesses favour cash over culture, and when ethics entails minimal compliance by box ticking, then the grand bargain looks outmoded.72 In 1939 the sociologist T. H. Marshall wrote: ‘[t]he professional man, it has been said, does not work in order to be paid: he is paid in order that he may work.’73 That many of today’s professionals need to reread this sentence several times to grasp its sense and sentiment shows how far they have strayed from early professional ideals. We turn to the question of changing values and motivations again in Chapter 6. Returning to the grand bargain The above, then, are the various theories of the professions, and in this book we are influenced by many of them. While we disagree with much that they say, and offer alternative views in the pages that follow, we do join them in asking why we tolerate the professions at all—why, in other words, we remain committed to the grand bargain. For us, the most compelling answer is not particularly complex. It comes in two parts. First, the professions do not themselves generally want to change, and so resist reform or revolution. Second, until now there has been no credible alternative to what they have on offer, no competing setup to the status quo.74 For Andrew Abbott, this second response relates to a more fundamental question: ‘[h]ow do we structure and control expertise in society?’75 In his view: 71Compare this with the proposition that ‘the professions should be uniquely sensitive to the dangers surrounding conflicts of interest’: John Coffee, Gatekeepers (2006), 365. 72More than this, it can even be argued, in the very specific sense that Lawrence Lessig identi fies, that there is institutional ‘corruption’ in some of the professions. See Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost (2011), 16–17. 73Marshall,‘The Recent History of Professionalism in Relation to Social Structure and Social Policy’, 325. 74See Abbott, The System of Professions, 324. 75Abbott, The System of Professions, 315. PAGE: 31 The grand bargain Professionalism has been the main way of institutionalizing expertise in indus trialized societies. There are, as we sometimes forget, many alternatives: the generalized expertise of the imperial civil services, the lay practitioners of certain religious groups, the popular diffusion of expertise characteristic of microcomputing...expertise is also institutionalized in commodities and organizations.To ask why societies incorporate their knowledge in the profes sions is thus not only to ask why societies have specialized, lifetime experts, but also why they place expertise in people rather than things or rules.76 For us, this is a vital passage. It positions expertise at the heart of the pro fessions, and it emphasizes that the professions are not the only way of making expertise available in society. Crucially, Abbott senses the potential of ‘microcomputing’ as one alternative. But he was unusual amongst the orists of the professions in acknowledging the likely relevance of IT. In the work of his contemporaries, it is remarkable that barely a mention was made of the role that technology might play in transforming the profes sions.77 It would have taken no leap of imagination in the 1980s—when auditors and management consultants were already using ‘microcomput ers’, and substantial work was being undertaken on decisionsupport sys tems and expert systems in tax and law—to predict that professionals’ work might be transformed through technology. Likewise, in the early 1990s, when the World Wide Web was born, social scientists working on the professions should have had some sense that this emerging technology was likely to be relevant.This disregard of technology is a fundamental shortcoming of the academic literature. One aim of this book is to correct this defect. 1.6. Four central questions In any event, it is time now to shift our focus from the past and to ask whether the grand bargain is a deal that still makes sense in the twentyfirst century. Drawing on the theoretical writings that we discuss earlier in this 76Abbott, The System of Professions, 323. 77 There are some references. For example, Paul Halmos, The Personal Service Society (1970), 9–10, on ‘automation’, and William Scott,‘Lords of the Dance: Professionals as Institutional Agents’, Organization Studies, 29: 2 (2008), 230, on ‘mechanization and routinization’. But the literature can be very dismissive. See e.g. MacDonald, The Sociology of the Professions, 62, where the possibility that artificial intelligence might have a role in the professions is written off as implausible. PAGE: 32 The future of the professions chapter, and building also on our work over the years in the legal profession, we suggest that there are four questions that must be asked and answered. First of all, might there be entirely new ways of organizing professional work, ways that are more affordable, more accessible, and perhaps more conducive to an increase in quality than the traditional approach? We believe that, in a technologybased Internet society, there must be scope for making at least some of the knowledge and experience of experts available on a different basis.And much of this book is devoted to introducing alternatives to the current setup. Second, even if we concede, at least for now, that human beings are indispensable in professional work, does it follow that all the work that our professionals currently do can only be undertaken by licensed experts? If we break down professional work into more basic tasks, it becomes apparent that much that goes on today under the umbrella of professional service is in fact routine and repetitive. It is hard to see why we only permit experts to undertake this work. We develop this thinking in various parts of the book (especially in Chapters 3 and 5), and suggest that a new division of labour can and should emerge. The third question follows from the first two, and there is no diplomatic way to put it. Bluntly, then, to what extent do we actually trust professionals to admit that their services could be delivered differently, or that some of their work could responsibly be passed along to nonprofessionals? If we leave it to professionals themselves to reinvent their workplace, are we asking the rabbits to guard the lettuce? Popular suspicion is fuelled here by the fact that professionals often regulate themselves, and it seems that only they can bring about reform or transformation in their work. Aristotle puts it wonderfully in observing that ‘[t]he guest will judge better of a feast than the cook’.78 The future of the professions is too important to be left in the hands of its members. Others, not least recipients of professional services, have a stake and should be entitled to contribute to discussions of the future. Fourthly, is the grand bargain actually working? Are our professions fit for purpose? Are they serving our societies well? We devote the next section to answering this fourth question. 78 Aristotle, Politics, part XI, at , (accessed 28 March 2015). Jethro Lieberman, a law professor, puts it similarly:‘The time for heresy is overdue:The expert is the wrong person to define his job or to evaluate how well it is per formed.’ See Lieberman, The Tyranny of the Experts, 275. PAGE: 33 The grand bargain 1.7. Disconcerting problems Looking back to section 1.1 and to our everyday conception of the professions, they appear, on the face of it, to be wellintentioned, relatively stable, and generally effective institutions. But if we peel away a layer or two and look beneath the surface, it transpires, rather disconcertingly, that our pro fessions are failing in six ways: economically, technologically, psychologic ally, morally, qualitatively, and in terms of their inscrutability. In combination, over time, these defects will become increasingly problematic. They will and should lead to a renegotiation of the grand bargain; a rebalancing of the relationship between the professions, the state, and society. We turn first to the economic problem. This can be simply stated: most people and organizations cannot afford the services of first-rate profession als; and most economies are struggling to sustain most of their professional services, including schools, court systems, and health services. This is not simply a consequence of the recent global recession. For some time, the harsh reality, broadly speaking, has been that only the rich or robustly insured can engage many topflight professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, accountants, and management consultants. The expertise of a very few is being bestowed upon a few. We seem to have a RollsRoyce service for the wellheeled minority, while everyone else is walking. In many professions, cuts in public funding have deepened this problem. It might be thought unrealistic to hope that all citizens should benefit from the knowledge and experience of leading experts. This expertise, it is popularly supposed, is a scarce resource. On closer scrutiny, however, it is clear that it is not the expertise itself that is in short supply; it is experts who are thin on the ground.The limitation here is in our current method of organizing and delivering professional work, which often requires inperson, face-to-face interaction. We return to this idea frequently in this book. Even if we settle for a lower standard of professional service that does not depend on the involvement of leading experts, the problem of afford ability remains. In most developed economies health service costs are spiralling, schools are lamentably underresourced, and middleoftheroad lawyers are beyond the pockets even of other middleclass professionals. Small businesses are disenfranchised. Their owners do not have the resources to retain management consultants, tax advisers, or accountants. Meanwhile, in the world’s largest organizations, we also find that professional services are regarded as prohibitively costly. Many CEOs and CFOs are insisting