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Full-Text Articles in Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Who Tells Their Stories?: Examining The Role, Duties, And Ethical Constraints Of The Victim’S Attorney Under Model Rule 3.6, Ksenia Matthews Dec 2021

Who Tells Their Stories?: Examining The Role, Duties, And Ethical Constraints Of The Victim’S Attorney Under Model Rule 3.6, Ksenia Matthews

Fordham Law Review

In U.S. criminal proceedings, the prosecution typically presents the victim’s story. However, as part of the victims’ rights movement, victims are striving to make their voices heard and tell their stories in their own words. Yet, despite the growing role victims occupy in criminal proceedings and the rights afforded to victims by the Crime Victims’ Rights Act and its state counterparts, victims still remain nonparties in criminal proceedings. As victims increasingly retain private lawyers to help navigate criminal proceedings and represent their interests, it is important to understand how these lawyers fall within the traditional two-party adversary system. Limited by …


Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik Apr 2017

Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik

Fordham Law Review

Trials are a vivid variable in the world of litigation, as reflected in the title of this colloquium, Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials. The conveners have wisely drawn attention to the disjuncture between legal ethics and today’s litigation world. In this Introduction, I argue that the challenges for lawyers loom larger than those reflected in the declining rate of trials. More facets of contemporary dispute resolution need to be engaged when contemplating the topics and roles that legal ethics need to address in the decades to come.


Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner Apr 2017

Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner

Fordham Law Review

These regulatory and market mechanisms for restraining lawyers share a common thread but differ in their purposes, efficacy, and fairness. Despite these differences, the growing intensity of their focus, and their possible amplification of each other, suggest the possibility of the emergence of new professional norms that call on litigators to think more deeply and inclusively about value from the perspective of court and client when making litigation choices.


The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis Apr 2017

The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis

Fordham Law Review

Drawing on these findings, we discuss the pressing need for a wider ethic that applies to transactional attorneys who design binding arbitration clauses within adhesion contracts. We also draw lessons from behavioral legal ethics and social psychology. These lessons reveal that this wider ethic may be endangered by the situational influences that currently operate within law firms (and in-house) due to these two intersecting patterns. We discuss ways of altering the regulatory environment to encourage the wider ethic to flourish.


Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding Apr 2017

Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding

Fordham Law Review

For decades now, American scholars of procedure and legal ethics have remarked upon the death of the jury trial. If jury trial is not in fact dead as an institution for the resolution of disputes, it is certainly “vanishing.” Even in complex litigation, courts tend to facilitate nonadjudicative resolutions—providing sites for aggregation, selection of counsel, fact gathering, and finality (via issue and claim preclusion)—rather than trial on the merits in any conventional sense of the term. In some high-stakes criminal cases and a fraction of civil cases, jury trial will surely continue well into the twenty-first century. Wall-to-wall media coverage …


Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik Apr 2017

Lawyers' Ethics Beyond The Vanishing Trial: Unrepresented Claimaints, De Facto Aggregations, Arbitration Mandates, And Privatized Processes, Judith Resnik

Fordham Law Review

Trials are a vivid variable in the world of litigation, as reflected in the title of this colloquium, Civil Litigation Ethics at a Time of Vanishing Trials. The conveners have wisely drawn attention to the disjuncture between legal ethics and today’s litigation world. In this Introduction, I argue that the challenges for lawyers loom larger than those reflected in the declining rate of trials. More facets of contemporary dispute resolution need to be engaged when contemplating the topics and roles that legal ethics need to address in the decades to come.


The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis Apr 2017

The Public Believes Predispute Binding Arbitration Clauses Are Unjust: Ethical Implications For Dispute-System Design In The Time Of Vanishing Trials, Victor D. Quintanilla, Alexander B. Avtgis

Fordham Law Review

Drawing on these findings, we discuss the pressing need for a wider ethic that applies to transactional attorneys who design binding arbitration clauses within adhesion contracts. We also draw lessons from behavioral legal ethics and social psychology. These lessons reveal that this wider ethic may be endangered by the situational influences that currently operate within law firms (and in-house) due to these two intersecting patterns. We discuss ways of altering the regulatory environment to encourage the wider ethic to flourish.


Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner Apr 2017

Restraining Lawyers: From “Cases” To “Tasks”, Morris A. Ratner

Fordham Law Review

These regulatory and market mechanisms for restraining lawyers share a common thread but differ in their purposes, efficacy, and fairness. Despite these differences, the growing intensity of their focus, and their possible amplification of each other, suggest the possibility of the emergence of new professional norms that call on litigators to think more deeply and inclusively about value from the perspective of court and client when making litigation choices.


Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding Apr 2017

Due Process Without Judicial Process?: Antiadversarialism In American Legal Culture, Norman W. Spaulding

Fordham Law Review

For decades now, American scholars of procedure and legal ethics have remarked upon the death of the jury trial. If jury trial is not in fact dead as an institution for the resolution of disputes, it is certainly “vanishing.” Even in complex litigation, courts tend to facilitate nonadjudicative resolutions—providing sites for aggregation, selection of counsel, fact gathering, and finality (via issue and claim preclusion)—rather than trial on the merits in any conventional sense of the term. In some high-stakes criminal cases and a fraction of civil cases, jury trial will surely continue well into the twenty-first century. Wall-to-wall media coverage …