Legal advisers working in the institutions of the European Union exercise significant power, but very little is known about their work. Notwithstanding the handful of cases where legal matters find their way into the news, legal advice remains invisible in EU policy making. For more than ten years Päivi Leino-Sandberg was a part of the invisible community of EU legal advisers, and participated in the exercise of their power. In this book, she shares her insights about how law and lawyers work in the EU institutions, and what their role and impact is on EU decisions from within the...

This edited collection examines the changing role of the legal profession as experts in the context of European Union policy-making. Drawing on theoretical and empirical research and the idea of law as a social and political practice, this socio-legal work brings together a group of legal scholars and political scientists to investigate how lawyers, through the deployment of their expertise and knowledge, act as experts in matters of EU related policy-making at the national, European and international levels. It provides new theoretical viewpoints and untold stories from legal experts...