Kenjebayeva A.T.
Partner, Dentons,
Founder, Institute of Expert Legal Research ZanSar
In front of me lies a unique book written more than a century ago, in 1916, by the American lawyer Julius Henry Cohen [1]. He asked a question that remains relevant today: is law a business or a profession? For Kazakhstan, this question is particularly acute, as І discuss in greater detail in my recently published monograph [2]. The urgency stems from the fact that the current regulatory framework divides lawyers into two categories: advocates and legal consultants. Advocates are required to adhere to strict professional standards and are prohibited from engaging in entrepreneurial activities. Legal consultants, on the other hand, operate as entrepreneurs, providing similar services but within a competitive market and without such stringent restrictions.
This duality intensifies the problem that Cohen described. On one side, advocates embody the traditional understanding of a profession, one grounded in service to justice and society. On the other, consultants act as business entities, oriented primarily toward profit and survival in the marketplace. The result is a system of unequal ethical obligations: advocates are bound by codes of conduct and disciplinary oversight, while consultants are governed more by the logic of entrepreneurship. This leads to an erosion of professional standards and a decline in public trust not only in the legal community but also in the judicial system as a whole.
The experience of foreign jurisdictions helps to illuminate the depth of the problem and the paths others have taken over the course of more than a hundred years. In the United Kingdom, since 2007, so-called Alternative Business Structures have been permitted, allowing law firms to accept external investors and combine legal services with other business activities. Such a step has been possible only thanks to strong regulation and strict professional oversight. In the United States, by contrast, partnerships between lawyers and non-lawyers, as well as the sharing of fees, remain largely prohibited, though the situation is gradually evolving. This preserves the independence and ethics of the profession but simultaneously makes legal services less affordable and less accessible. Germany offers a third way: it maintains a single legal profession, the Rechtsanwalt, which combines entrepreneurial activity with rigorous professional responsibility and mandatory bar membership.
Against this background, the Kazakhstani model appears especially vulnerable. On the one hand, it permits entrepreneurial activity to legal consultants. On the other hand, this activity is scarcely accompanied by professional regulation comparable to that found in the British or French systems. As a result, part of the market operates under the rules of a profession, while another part functions under the rules of business. This inevitably undermines public trust and weakens the perception of the lawyer as an independent defender of rights.
There are several possible ways forward. One option is to unify the profession along German lines, requiring all lawyers, regardless of their form of practice, to comply with uniform ethical standards and disciplinary oversight. Another option is to preserve the entrepreneurial component but introduce a clear regulatory system similar to that in the UK, where innovation and market flexibility coexist with strict control over professional standards. In any case, the century-long experience of other jurisdictions demonstrates that establishing firm ethical standards and accountability is an essential condition for the healthy functioning of the legal profession.
Thus, Kazakhstan’s legal system finds itself at the very heart of Cohen’s old dilemma. The question of whether the work of practicing lawyers should be regarded as a profession or a business stands today even more sharply for Kazakhstan than it did for American lawyers a hundred years ago. The resolution of this issue is directly tied not only to the future of the legal profession but also to public confidence in justice and the sustainability of the rule of law.
1. Julius Henry Cohen. THE LAW Business or Profession? The Banks Law Publishing Co. New York. 1916. Reprint by BookReneissance www.ren-books.com.
2. Кенжебаева А.Т. Государственное регулирование и саморегулирование юридической профессии в Центральной Азии: сравнительно-правовой анализ: Монография/ под общей редакцией д-ра юрид. наук, проф. И.А. Хамедова.- Алматы: Институт экспертно-правовых исследований ZanSar, 2025.- 368 с.
Следите за свежими материалами, подписывайтесь здесь: Telegram, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube
