Mobilisation of the Law

Abstract

This paper offers a discussion in behavioural terms of legal practice in its widest sense. It presents a framework for assessing how the law is mobilised by the legal customer. This mobilisation includes the entire social process, from problem identification in legal terms (termed ‘framing’) to the consultation of lawyers and the use of the courts. It is demonstrated that mobilisation in this sense is a much more common social process than litigation and that between the two extremes of litigation and ‘framing’ there exists a substantial ‘funneling’ process. An assessment of the social aspects of this process is given, and some comparative results for Germany, in the context of a theory of litigation, are presented.