Legal Profession Commons^™

'What's Love Got To Do With It?' - 'It's Not Like They're Your Friends For Christ's Sake' : The Complicated Relationship Between Lawyer And Client, Robert J. Condlin

Faculty Scholarship

Should lawyers love their clients and try to be their friends? Highly regarded legal scholars have defended the “lawyer-as-friend” analogy in the past, although usually on the basis of a more contractual understanding of friendship than the understanding currently in vogue. These past efforts were widely criticized on a variety of grounds, and after a period of debate, support for the analogy appeared to wane. That is until recently, when other scholars, looking at the topic from a more religious perspective, have asserted a refined version of the friendship analogy as the proper model for lawyer-client relations. It is this …