This article examines how cause lawyers in conflicted and authoritarian societies balance their professional responsibilities as lawyers with their commitment to a political cause. It is drawn from extensive interviews with both lawyers and political activists in a range of societies. It focuses on the challenges for lawyers in managing relations with violent politically‐motivated clients and their movements. Using the notion of ‘legitimation work', it seeks to examine the complex, fluid, and contingent understandings of legal professionalism that is developed in such contexts, offering three overlapping ‘ideal types’ of cause lawyers in order to better understand the meaning of legal professionalism in such sites: (a) struggle lawyers (b) human rights activists and (c) a ‘pragmatic moral community'. The article concludes by re‐examining how law is imagined in the legitimation work of cause lawyers in such settings and how that work is remembered in the transition from violence.

中文翻译：

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冲突中的律师，政治暴力和专业精神

本文探讨了在冲突和专制社会中律师的事业如何平衡他们作为律师的职业责任与对政治事业的承诺。它取材于一系列社会对律师和政治活动家的广泛采访。它着眼于律师在管理与出于政治动机的暴力客户及其活动的关系时所面临的挑战。它使用“合法化工作”的概念，试图研究在这种情况下发展起来的对法律专业性的复杂，流动和偶然性的理解，提供三种重叠的诉讼律师“理想类型”，以便更好地理解法律的含义。这些场所的专业精神：（a）与律师斗争（b）人权活动家，以及（c）“务实的道德社区”。