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Law and Society

Selected Works

2011

Legal ethics

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Law

Professional Responsibility In An Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics In China, Judith A. Mcmorrow Oct 2011

Professional Responsibility In An Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics In China, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Judith A. McMorrow

The rapidly expanding Chinese legal profession provides an extraordinary opportunity for the U.S. legal profession to test U.S. assumptions about legal ethics. This essay examines challenges facing Chinese legal education and the Chinese legal profession as it develops norms of legal ethics. This essay examines this process from the law school and law student’s perspective about legal ethics, and then briefly explores the effort to create norms of attorney conduct from a top-down perspective. Both a bottom-up and top-down view show the tremendous challenges facing the emerging Chinese legal culture in building a coherent model of lawyering that can serve …


Professionalism: The Deep Theory, Daniel R. Coquillette Oct 2011

Professionalism: The Deep Theory, Daniel R. Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

Can our personal ethics and our professional ethics be in opposition? Our professional identity as lawyers is at the center of our personal morality. The legal profession is in crisis because we have lost sight of the deep theory of professionalism. This article focuses on our ultimate motivation for obeying rules, concentrating on three common categories: goal-based, rights-based, and duty-based theories. By examining these theories, the article argues that lawyers must turn away from the modern trend of goal instrumentalism and refocus legal practice on its humanistic roots.