Learning to be a lawyer in transnational law firms: communities of ...

highly central. To produce individuals with the right mindset and motivation becomes a more
vital part of the total apparatus of control mechanisms and practices than is the case for other
organizations”. Table 5 outlines the different types of identity regulation strategies identified by
Alvesson and Willmott (2002) with, according to our research, those in italics being enacted
through CoP formed around training in transnational law firms. It is unsurprising that CoP are
used for such identity regulation work. As Wenger (1998) notes, “There is a profound connection
between identity and practice…Inevitably, our practices deal with the profound issue of how to
be a human being. In this sense, the formation of a community of practice is also the negotiation
of identities” (Wenger, 1998, 149). Being a member of a CoP involves learning both the skills
associated with a particular job – e.g. best practices associated with how to effectively operate a
machine, how to use the firm’s client billing systems – but also the attitudes and values of
community members, “what everyday life is like; how masters talk, walk, work, and generally
conduct their lives” (Lave and Wenger, 1991, 95).
[insert table 5]
In transnational law firms CoP formed by global training events and associated with Diploma
programmes play three different roles in identity regulation. First, they allow lawyers from
different worldwide offices to come together for a period of time and learn from the senior
partners of the firm, who are usually drawn from the home-country, about the types of attitudes
and values lawyers are expected to display. As one training partner commented, “[Person x] our
managing partner is committed to helping people, you know, if you like, be induced into the
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