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Specialty Bar Associations And The Marketing Of Ethics: The Example Of The Academy Of Adoption Attorneys, Malinda L. Seymore
Specialty Bar Associations And The Marketing Of Ethics: The Example Of The Academy Of Adoption Attorneys, Malinda L. Seymore
Faculty Scholarship
In a world of lawyer jokes, memes of sleazy lawyers and the ubiquity of bad lawyers in television shows and movies, lawyers have reason to push back against negative public perceptions of lawyers’ ethics. This article examines the role of specialty bar associations, by using the example of the Academy of Adoption Attorneys, in marketing ethics to the public.
Specialty bar associations have been seen as sites of lawyer socialization and professionalism. Though there are thousands of specialty bar associations with aspirational ethical codes, the Academy of Adoption Attorneys is unusual among such associations in having a mandatory ethics code, …
Ethical Blind Spots In Adoption Lawyering, Malinda L. Seymore
Ethical Blind Spots In Adoption Lawyering, Malinda L. Seymore
Faculty Scholarship
Lawyers engaged in adoption work often call it “happy law,” and consider adoption – finding a child for yearning parents, finding parents for a needy child – an unmitigated good. That attitude can mask the fact that all adoption begins with loss. One family loses a child so that another family can gain one. A lawyer’s assurance that she is engaged in positive work can lead to ethical blind spots that ignore the complexities of adoption practice. And while the touchstone of adoption is the best interests of the child, the primacy in legal ethics of the interests of the …