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AbstractThis paper examines the anxieties and uncertainties of aspiring barristers in order to understand the workings of elite professional status. The literature poses two diverging conceptions of negative feelings: as mechanisms for power and solidarity, concentrated at initiation, or else indicators of diminished control and breakdown. To allow for both potential meanings, this paper draws on an ethnographic study of two cohorts of trainee English barristers: one private, one public. The findings detail and compare the sources, nature, and consequences of bad feeling across the sectors. This innovative analysis detects the modes and blends of authority and cohesion, as well as differentiation, declining status, and even separation. This paper argues for intra-professional analyses as valuable groundwork for wider comparisons.

This article focuses on individual lawyers' responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in their practice. More specifically, it examines the ways in which a lawyer's ethical capabilities and motivations are tested by the rapid growth of automated systems, both to identify the ethical risks posed by AI tools in legal services, and to uncover what is required of lawyers when they use this technology. To do so, we use psychologist James Rest's Four-component Model of Morality (FCM), which represents the necessary elements for lawyers to engage in professional conduct when utilising AI. We examine issues associated with automation that most seriously challenge each component in context, as well as the skills and resolve lawyers need to adhere to their ethical duties. Importantly, this approach is grounded in social psychology. That is, by looking at human 'thinking and doing' (i.e., lawyers' motivations and capacity when using AI), this offers a different, complementary perspective to the typical, legislative approach in which the law is analysed for regulatory gaps.

Corporations play an increasingly significant role in public policy and democratic politics. This article seeks to understand how corporate political activities gain political influence through intertextual strategies. The analysis is conducted on the texts produced by the Australian government in proposing a new tax as well as the texts produced by the mining industry in campaigning against the tax. We show how the government texts represent the proposed tax as a fair opportunity, while the mining industry texts represent the tax as an unfair threat. The findings attend to the processes of how the mining industry 'stitched' together constituencies in support of their representation. This article contributes to the existing literature on corporate political activity by showing how overt and indirect corporate activities and communications influence public policy agendas. It also contributes to critical studies of corporate political activity by theorizing how textual strategies can be used to align corporate interests in hegemonic political struggles through the creation of a phantom community. Finally, the article contributes to theories of intertextuality by developing a typology to analyse textual representation.