Digital Commons Network^™

The Challenges Of Developing Cross-Cultural Legal Ethics Education, Professional Development, And Guidance For The Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

The broad goal of this paper is to describe the need, and provide a framework, for engaging in cross-cultural conversations among lawyers, law teachers, and others, who are using legal ethics as a vehicle for improving the legal professions and the delivery of legal services. All legal cultures struggle with the question of how to educate students and lawyers to be ethical professionals and how to regulate the legal profession effectively. The purpose of the cross-cultural conversations discussed in this paper would be to develop principles of legal ethics education, professional development, and regulation of the legal professions that can …

Who’S The Boss?: The Need For Thoughtful Identification Of The Client(S) In Special Education Cases , Yael Zakai Cannon

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

No abstract provided.

Crisis In The Legal Profession: Don’T Mourn, Organize!, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

Scholarly Works

When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

Upjohn Warnings, The Attorney-Client Privilege, And Principles Of Lawyer Ethics: Achieving Harmony, Grace M. Giesel

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert Linz

Other Faculty Publications

Officers of the court and public figures, including attorneys and judges, are required to adhere to high ethical standards in conducting their professional duties. Courts and bar associations have a long tradition of identifying ethical norms and regulating conduct through rules and action. Although some conduct is obviously incorrect, the appropriateness of other conduct is less clear. When attorneys are unsure of the ethical nature of an action, they will need to consult sources for guidance. These sources may be fellow attorneys or bar association ethics hotline advisors.These sources also include the rules, decisions, and commentary that constitute the body …

Shadow Lawyering: Nonlawyer Practice Within Law Firms, Paul R. Tremblay

Indiana Law Journal

Lawyers commonly associate with nonlawyers to assist in their performance of lawyering tasks. A lawyer cannot know with confidence, though, whether the delegation of some tasks to a nonlawyer colleague might result in her assisting in the unauthorized practice of law, because the state of the law and the commentary about nonlawyer practice is so confused and incoherent. Some respected authority within the profession tells the lawyer that she may only delegate preparatory matters and must prohibit the nonlawyer from discussing legal matters with clients, or negotiating on behalf of clients. Other authority suggests that the lawyer may delegate a …

Three Models Of Legal Ethics, Anthony D'Amato, Edward J. Eberle

Faculty Working Papers

This article presents a picture of each of the three theoretical models—autonomy, socialist, and deontological—and indicates how they differ from one another in their application to some aspects of attorney-client confidentiality, one of the most hotly debated topics of professional ethics.

Exporting American Legal Ethics, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

None available.

Lawyering In The Supreme Court, Paul D. Clement

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Beyond Cardboard Clients In Legal Ethics, Kate Kruse

Faculty Scholarship

This Article argues that the construction of cardboard clients in legal ethics has disserved legal ethics by obscuring what is arguably a more central problem of legal professionalism: the problem of legal objectification. The problem of legal objectification is the tendency of lawyers to "issue-spot" their clients as they would the facts on a blue-book exam, overemphasizing the clients' legal interests and minimizing or ignoring the other cares, commitments, relationships, reputations and values that constitute the objectives clients bring to legal representation. This Article proposes an alternative ideal of legal professionalism for "three-dimensional clients" based on helping clients articulate and …

An Introduction To The Financial Action Task Force And Its 2008 Lawyer Guidance, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarship

The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is a thirty-eight-member intergovernmental organization whose mission is to fight money laundering and terrorism financing; the U.S. is a founding member of the FATF. The FATF is best known for its 40 Recommendations, many of which are directed towards various kinds of “gatekeepers” who are in a position to facilitate or inhibit money laundering and terrorism financing. (These were previously known as the 40+9 Recommendations). Lawyers are among those to whom the FATF’s recommendations apply. This article provides the introduction for the Journal of the Professional Lawyer’s Symposium about the application of the FATF …

The Lesson Of The Irish Family Pub: The Elder Clinic Path To A More Thoughtful Practice, Katherine C. Pearson

Faculty Scholarship

In this article, the Director of the Elder Law Clinic at Pennsylvania State University provides insight into the development of Elder Law as a unique discipline by tracking the history and challenges faced by her program as it approaches ten years of operation. A core focus of the Elder Law clinic, beyond practical experience, is to expose its students to the ethical issues confronted in Elder Law practice. Students in the clinic combine classroom discussions with practical experience representing clients, thereby becoming better prepared for their professional futures, while also gaining appreciation for the special concerns of the elderly client. …

Foreword: The New Era- Quo Vadis?, John Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

The Inaugural MBI Symposium’s twenty-six participants highlight many important developments and challenges caused by MJP and new technologies. Their assessments and suggestions provide a helpful roadmap for lawyers and regulators to negotiate the increasingly complex, fast-paced, and ethically risky landscape for delivering legal services. Several panelists suggested regulatory reforms that range from the creation of a regulatory framework for lawyers engaged in crossborder practice to the creation of standards for the supervision of offshore outsourced legal services268 and the mining of metadata. Some of the panelists’ suggestions and reforms are especially important given the “high [financial] stakes” involved in the …

Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert M. Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Collaborative Lawyers' Duties To Screen The Appropriateness Of Collaborative Law And Obtain Clients' Informed Consent To Use Collaborative Law, John M. Lande, Forrest Steven Mosten

Faculty Publications

Collaborative Law (CL) is an innovative dispute resolution process that offers significant benefits but also poses significant non-obvious risks. This Article provides a systematic analysis of these possible risks as identified in books written by CL experts, CL practice group websites, social science research, and bar association ethics opinions. In CL, the lawyers and clients sign a "participation agreement" promising to use an interest-based approach to negotiation and fully disclose all relevant information. A key element of CL is the "disqualification agreement" signed by parties (and sometimes by attorneys) which provides that both CL lawyers would be disqualified from representing …

The Ethics Of Blawging: A Genre Analysis, Judy Cornett

Scholarly Works

Lawyers are blogging. As of October 16, 2009, the website Blawg.com tracked 2,788 legal blogs ("blawgs"). Another blawg directory compiled 4,622 blawgs in 69 substantive categories. When lawyers communicate, by whatever medium, ethical dilemmas arise; when lawyers blog, ethical dilemmas arise that are unique to blogging. The most visible ethical debate inspired by this new genre is the issue of whether to treat a lawyer's blog as advertising. Surprisingly, given the popularity of blawging, there are few resources addressing the full range of its ethical ramifications. This Article applies genre theory to blawging in order to highlight certain characteristics of …

Ethics, Internal Law School Clinics, And Training The Next Generation Of Poverty Lawyers, Nina W. Tarr

William Mitchell Law Review

No abstract provided.

Shifting Paradigms Of Lawyer Honesty, John A. Humbach

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

The Model Rules currently contain at least four distinct conceptions of what it means for a lawyer to be honest. Moreover, the levels of honesty that the ethical rules demand have changed markedly in recent times. This article explores why, for the lawyers of today, being “honest” seems to be so complicated.

The exploration begins by reviewing recent changes in the honesty concepts embodied in the Model Rules, particularly the new duty to reveal confidential information that lawyers have under Rule 4.1. Attention then turns to what it means to be “honest” in the context of our modern exaggerated version …

The Two Faces Of Lawyers: Professional Ethics And Business Compliance With Regulation, Christine E. Parker, Robert E. Rosen, Vibeke Lehmann Nielsen

Articles

No abstract provided.

Legal Ethics And Collaborative Practice Ethics, Robert F. Cochran Jr.

Hofstra Law Review

In Collaborative Practice (CP), the clients and their attorneys (and other professionals in the case, if there are any) contract to resolve the issues presented in a structured process without litigation. Lawyers who engage in CP are governed by the legal professional rules in their state. However, Collaborative Practice differs greatly from adversarial dispute resolution practice. It challenges practitioners in ways not necessarily addressed by the ethics of individual disciplines. Therefore, collaborative professionals have developed their own standards to provide guidance for their members. Cochran describes the legal and ethical context within which professionals engage in CP in the United …

A Vision For Collaborative Practice: The Final Report Of The Hofstra Collaborative Law Conference, J. Herbie Difonzo

Hofstra Law Review

In November 2009, Hofstra University School of Law’s Center for Children, Families and the Law hosted a Conference on the Uniform Collaborative Law Act, in conjunction with the Uniform Law Commission, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals ("IACP"), and the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution. This event marked the first time a law school has sponsored a conference exclusively focusing on the innovative practice of collaborative law.

The goal of the Conference was to assess collaborative practice in light of the adoption of the Uniform Collaborative Law Act (“UCLA”). This Report …

Lessons In Legal Ethics From Reading About The Life Of Lincoln, Eugene R. Gaetke

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Lawyers As Quasi-Public Actors, W. Bradley Wendel

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

This paper was written for a panel on access to justice at the 100th anniversary conference of the Law Society of Alberta, Canada. In it I argue that the debate over access to justice, which in the United States generally means pro bono representation provided by individual lawyers, cannot be divorced from broader theoretical debates about the lawyer's role. My claim is that lawyers are quasi-public actors, in the sense that they have some responsibility to aim directly at justice in their representation of clients, and cannot rely only on indirect strategies to ensure that justice is served. The argument …

Professional Responsibility In Crisis, Douglas L. Colbert

Faculty Scholarship

Some rare, often catastrophic, events present in stark terms a need for careful reflection over the role of attorneys in our society and their ethical duties as members of the legal profession. The devastation caused by both Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 certainly falls within this category. Professor Colbert uses these events as a backdrop to examine the legal profession’s ethical obligation when crisis compromises the most basic elements of our system of justice. Acknowledging that numerous members of the bar and thousands of volunteer law students courageously stepped forward in those challenging …

A New Frontier Or Merely A New Medium - An Analysis Of The Ethics Of Blawgs, Justin Krypel

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The purpose of this Note is to investigate those rules of ethics which interact with attorney blogs, placing a special emphasis on advertising rules. The central finding is that, under the Supreme Court's current First Amendment jurisprudence, attorney blogs (or, more cleverly, "blawgs") are not subject to regulation by the ethics codes of the ABA or the various state bars. Furthermore, if the Supreme Court were to, for some reason, construe blawgs as falling outside of First Amendment protection, evidence suggests that regulating this new medium would be neither desirable nor effective. Part II outlines the historical framework which underlies …

Preventive Law: A Strategy For Internal Corporate Lawyers To Advise Managers Of Their Ethical Obligations, Z. Jill Barclift

Faculty Scholarship

This article examines the efficacy of Preventive Law jurisprudence to internal corporate law practice. The article compares internal corporate law practice to the practice approach of Preventive Law. The article explores the benefits of Preventive Law jurisprudence to internal corporate law practice. Part I discusses the history and various vectors of Preventive Law. Part II examines the responsibilities of corporate law departments. Part III compares Preventive Law practice skills to internal corporate law practice, and explores the utility of Barton’s problem solving approaches to internal corporate law practice. Finally, the article concludes arguing internal corporate law practice is Preventive Law …

Capital Guidelines And Ethical Duties: Mutually Reinforcing Responsibilities, Lawrence J. Fox

Hofstra Law Review

This article appears in the Hofstra Law Review symposium issue on the Supplementary Guidelines for the Mitigation Function of Defense Teams in Death Penalty cases.

It is counsel, and not any non-lawyer member of the multidisciplinary defense team which needs to be assembled to provide competent representation in a capital case, who bears ultimate responsibility for the team's performance and for decisions affecting the client and the case. This article describes the many respects in which counsel's specific obligations under both the ABA's Guidelines for the Appointment and Performance of Defense Counsel in Death Penalty Cases reprinted in 31 Hofstra …

Lawfare And Legal Ethics In Guantánamo, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper, part of a symposium on the legal profession, focuses on the lawyers – some civilian and some military – who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay. These include civilian counsel representing Guantánamo prisoners in habeas proceedings, as well as civilian and military defense counsel for those facing trial before military commissions. Using published sources as well as interviews with some of the lawyers, the paper examines the tactics by which the U.S. government has tried to disrupt the effective representation of Guantánamo detainees. In the case of habeas lawyers, whose very presence at Guantánamo is unwelcome by the government, …

Growing Pains: Changes In Collaborative Law And The Challenge Of Legal Ethics, Christopher M. Fairman

Campbell Law Review

No abstract provided.