Legal Profession Commons^™

Law's Ambition And The Reconstruction Of Role Morality In Canada, David M. Tanovich

Dalhousie Law Journal

There is a growing disconnect and alienation between lawyers and the legal profession in Canada. One cause, which is the focus ofthe article, is philosophical in nature. There appears to be a disconnect between the role lawyers want to pursue (i.e., a facilitator of justice) and the role that they perceive the profession demands they play (i.e., a hired gun). The article argues that this perception is a mistaken one. Over the last fifteen years, we have been engaged in a process of role morality reconstruction. Under this reconstructed institutional role, an ethic of client-centred zealous advocacy has slowly begun …

Organizational Form As Status And Signal, Kimberly D. Krawiec

ExpressO

In this Article, the author analyzes the reactions of 147 New York City law firms to the 1994 enactment of the New York Limited Liability Partnership statute, which provided New York law firm partners with the first convenient mechanism to limit their personal liability for partnership debts. Using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, she evaluates whether the behavior of New York law firms supports the signaling theory of organizational form—that is, the theory that firms use the partnership form to signal to the marketplace that they provide high quality legal services, due to either superior monitoring or to profit sharing. …

Licensing And Discipline Of Fiscal Professionals In The State Of Florida: Attorneys, Certified Public Accountants, And Real Estate Professionals, Debra Curtis

Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this article is to compare the regulation of several professions within the state of Florida. In Florida, attorneys are self-regulated through the Florida Bar. As a branch of the Supreme Court of Florida, The Florida Bar serves as the licensing agency of attorneys within the state. Two other professions--real estate professionals and certified public accountants--in which the public also places fiscal trust and responsibility, are regulated through a different agency, the Department of Business and Professional Regulation. This article seeks to examine and explain the different methods of licensing and regulation between these professional groups and looks …

Lawyers In Cyberspace: The Impact Of Legal Listservs On The Professioal Development And Ethical Decisionmaking Of Lawyers, Leslie Levin

Leslie C. Levin

This article explores the impact of trial lawyers' associations on the professional identities of its members, their professional development, their understanding of practice norms, and their ethical decision making. It does so by looking at the New York State Trial Lawyers Association (NYSTLA), and more specifically, the conversations that occur on its listserv. When these conversations are viewed in the context of the history and current operations of NYSTLA, it is possible to see how such listservs powerfully promote shared professional values and views within NYSTLA=s membership. The listserv extends the advice networks of trial lawyers far beyond the small …

Revisiting A Classic: Duncan Kennedy's Legal Education And The Reproduction Of Hierarchy The Ghost In The Law School: How Duncan Kennedy Caught The Hierarchy Zeitgeist But Missed The Point, Steve Sheppard

Steve Sheppard

In his manifesto, Duncan Kennedy aptly identified hierarchies within legal scholarship and the legal profession, but his conclusion--hierarchies in law are wrong and must be resisted--is misplaced. Kennedy’s Legal Education and the Reproduction of Hierarchy: A Polemic Against the System, claims law schools breed a hierarchical system, where rank plays an important part in how law schools relate to each other; how faculty members relate to each other and to students; and how students relate to other students. This system trains students to accept and prepare for their place within the hierarchy of the legal profession. According to Kennedy, such …

Winners And Losers In The Globalization Of Legal Services: Offshoring The Market For Foreign Lawyers, Carole Silver

Articles by Maurer Faculty

This article takes an empirical approach to the issue of how the U.S. legal services market is responding to globalization. It begins by considering the ways in which the domestic legal services market has internationalized by focusing on changes in legal education and examines the disconnection between U.S. legal education and practice opportunities in the U.S. The article proceeds to consider the ways in which U.S. law firms have become global organizations by offshoring their international identities, through the staffing of their non-U.S. offices with non-U.S. lawyers. Based on a database of more than 5,000 lawyers working in the offshore …

Transnational Legal Practice Developments, Carole Silver, Robert E. Lutz, Philip T. Von Mehren, Laurel S. Terry, Peter Ehrenhaft, Clifford J. Hendel, Jonathan Goldsmith, Masahiro Shimojo

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Lawyers' Bargaining Ethics, Contract, And Collaboration: The End Of The Legal Profession And The Beginning Of Professional Pluralism, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

This Article combines contractarian economics and traditional ethical theory to argue for a radical revision of the legal profession's codes of ethics. That revision would end the legal profession as we know it-one profession, regulated by one set of ethical rules that apply to all lawyers regardless of circumstance. It would replace the existing uniform conception of the lawyer's role with a more heterogeneous profession in which lawyers and clients could contractually choose the ethical obligations under which they wanted to operate. This "contract model" of legal ethics, in which lawyers could opt in and out of various ethical constraints, …

The Role Of Foreign Languages In Educating Lawyers For Transnational Challenges, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

In a world in which every other country seems intent on teaching English to their youth, and in which the United States educational system does not place a high priority on teaching foreign languages, the American law student, dean and professor may doubt if foreign language knowledge is anything more than marginally helpful to law graduates. Similarly, educators at the primary school level may not be likely to assess foreign language education as warranting a greater allocation of scarce public resources.

The usefulness of foreign languages to the United States lawyer gradually has been gaining increased recognition in the profession, …