Deconstructing Legal Professional Identity: An Analysis on the Meanings of Hukukcu (Jurist) in Everyday Legal Practice in Turkey

The term hukukcu (jurist) is commonly used to refer to someone who has legal expertise. It is also exclusively used among legal professionals to refer to a legal professional who has distinct legal knowledge, qualities, skills, and orientations. The double meaning of hukukcu naturalizes under the premise of standardized legal education/training and professional competition as a routine part of everyday legal practice while obscuring the ambiguities that it generates in both constituting a common place for legal community and distinguishing from one legal professional from another. In providing an understanding of these ambiguities, this paper interrogates the meanings that lawyers attribute to the term hukukcu. It examines how lawyers articulate the distinctions between the term hukukcu and avukat (lawyer). It argues that hukukcu constitutes a playful centre in informing legal professional orientations as part of everyday practice. Through analysing the narratives of twelve lawyers living in Turkey, it provides a map of the themes through which lawyers express the distinct knowledge, qualities, skills, and orientations of hukukcu as opposed to those of avukat. It also demonstrates two modes in which lawyers position the professional practice of avukat in relation to that of hukukcu. This paper challenges the monolithic conception of contemporary legal professional construction through discussing the function and elements of hukukcu in concurrently opening possibilities of and imposing limitations on legal change.