Law Commons^™

Law Society Regulation And The Lawyer-Academic, Andrew Flavelle Martin

Dalhousie Law Journal

Can, and should, law societies regulate and discipline lawyers for their teaching and research? This article explores these largely overlooked but critically important questions in order to establish a foundation for further debate and discussion by lawyers, legislators, and law societies. It argues that professionalism precludes only low-value teaching and research—teaching and research with little pedagogical or epistemic value such that it is unlikely or unworthy to be protected by academic freedom—and that any chilling effect on lawyer-academics comes as much from uncertainty as from actual danger of regulatory consequences. The author concludes that law societies and other stakeholders should …

“Listserv Lawyering”: Definition And Exploration Of Its Utility In Representation Of Consumer Debtors In Bankruptcy And In Law Practice Generally, Josiah M. Daniel Iii

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The author examines the communications and activities of bankruptcy lawyers participating in the listserv of the Bankruptcy Law Section of the State Bar of Texas and finds that those activities constitute a previously unrecognized form of “lawyering,” which he has defined as the work of lawyers in and through the legal system to accomplish the objectives of their clients. Review of specific postings about legal issues and practical problems by Texas bankruptcy lawyers, whose practices are primarily on behalf of individual debtors in cases under Chapters 7 and 13 of the Bankruptcy Code, and observations about the voluntary, collaborative, and …

Book Review Essay: Jewish And American Law: A Comparative Study. (Vols. 1 And 2) By Samuel J. Levine, Marie A. Failinger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Human Rights Code Of Conduct: Ambitious Moral Aspiration For A Public Interest Law Office Or Law Clinic, Lauren E. Bartlett

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Part I of this Article argues that the lack of moral aspiration in legal ethics rules helps contribute to unhappy and unhealthy law students and lawyers, undermining the legal profession. Part II reviews the existing rules and standards that guide the ethical behavior of lawyers in the United States, arguing that all too often the binding rules focus on providing guide posts, signaling where behavior is unacceptable and disciplinary action is possible, instead of providing moral aspiration and options or next steps to describe what a lawyer should do to deal with an ethical dilemma.

Part III of this …

Ahead Of His Time: Cardozo And The Current Debates On Professional Responsibility, Alberto Bernabe

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law Firm Economics And Professionalism, Ward Bower

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Both Dean Kronman in The Lost Lawyer and Professor Glendon in A Nation Under Lawyers attribute some of the problems and challenges facing lawyers today to economic pressures and to a preoccupation with profits and fees. For Kronman, this economic focus interferes with the “moral detachment” necessary for achievement of the “lawyer-statesman” ideal. For Glendon, professional dilemmas caused by the deterioration of the legal economy, competition in the marketplace, lawyer-shopping by clients, early specialization, lack of mentoring and emphasis on the billable hour have created an unhappy generation of ethically challenged practitioners.

Both authors accurately assess the state of the …

Lawyers In The Mist: The Golden Age Of Legal Nostalgia, Marc Galanter

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No one watching the contemporary furor over the litigation explosion and lawsuits devouring America can fail to be impressed by the power of folklore to overwhelm workaday organized social knowledge. Time and again, the protestations of bean-counters and skeptics are vanquished by stories about perverse institutions peopled by malingering plaintiffs, greedy lawyers, capricious jurors, and arrogant judges, proving yet again that it is not what is so that matters, but what people—at least for the moment—think is so. Tenacious belief may not make it so, but can have powerful effects.

In this essay I address another cluster of folklore about …

Money Didn’T Buy Happiness, Lawrence J. Fox

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Reconstructing Professionalism, Dana A. Remus

Georgia Law Review

Amidst widespread calls of crisis in the American legal
profession, scholars, commentators and bar leaders are
proposing that we rely on market logic to address the
problems and challenges of contemporary lawyering.
Proposed reforms seek to unbundle, commoditize, and
automate as many legal services as possible; to allow non-
lawyers to capitalize law firms and litigation; and to
permit services providers with limited or no legal training
to perform a wide range of legal tasks. In much the same
way that policymakers in the 1980s and 1990s came to
accept market-based deregulatory reforms to industries
across the country, today's ethics …

Therapeutic Jurisprudence, Professionalism, And "Spikes" For Lawyers, Shelley Kierstead

St. Thomas Law Review

This article will progress as follows. In Part 1, I discuss both the medical profession and the legal profession's challenges in relation to effective communication with patients and clients. I suggest that the medical profession's response, specifically as it relates to delivering bad news, has been more proactive and widespread than the legal profession's response. Part 2 briefly reviews research dealing with legal clients' emotional responses to different forms of communication, with a view supporting the argument that clarity of information, empathic responses to clients' reactions, and collaborative problem-solving are important elements of a professional relationship. Part 3 introduces the …

Baltimore Law Clubs: A Tradition Promoting The Integrity Of The Bar Through Scholarship And Congeniality, Stuart R. Berger, Bryant S. Green

University of Baltimore Law Forum

Since before the civil war, lawyers and judges in Baltimore have had a tendency to organize informal, intimate, and exclusive clubs for the purpose of promoting congeniality and scholarship.1 Although this Anglo-American tradition traces back to as early as the sixteenth century,2 the institution of law clubs in the United States appears to have been a unique, local phenomenon until the 1960s and 1970s.3 Today, this tradition continues in Baltimore City, which currently plays host to no fewer than eight individual law clubs, with many more existing throughout the state. These law clubs offer their members the opportunity to pursue …

Incentivizing Lawyers To Play Nice: A National Survey Of Civility Standards And Options For Enforcement, Cheryl B. Preston, Hilary Lawrence

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

In the last decade, most commentators assume that lawyers’ behavior is now diving to new lows, notwithstanding a flurry of professionalism and civility creeds adopted in the 1980s and 1990s. Proponents of making such creeds enforceable argue that a return to professionalism may improve lawyers’ well-being, restore the public’s confidence in lawyers, and raise the expectations of behavior, not only with respect to civility but also with respect to violations of the Rules of Professional Conduct (hereinafter, as adapted in various jurisdictions, the Rules of Professional Conduct or the Model Rules)

A Heretical View Of Teaching: A Contrarian Looks At Teaching, The Carnegie Report, And Best Practices, Gary Shaw

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Mindful Law School: An Integrative Approach To Transforming Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Epistemology And Ethics In Relationship-Centered Legal Education And Practice, Susan L. Brooks, Robert G. Madden

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Look Backwards: An Open Letter To The Arkansas Bar, Phillip Carroll

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Practice, Anthony V. Alfieri

Michigan Law Review

This Review examines the theory/practice dichotomy in legal education through the prism of the Carnegie Foundation's Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law. Descriptively, it argues that the Foundation's investigation of law school curricular deficiencies in the areas of clinical-lawyer skills, professionalism, and public service overlooks the relevance of critical pedagogies in teaching students how to deal with difference-based identity and how to build cross-cultural community in diverse, multicultural practice settings differentiated by mutable and immutable characteristics such as class, gender, and race. Prescriptively, it argues that the Foundation's remedial call for the curricular integration of clinical lawyer …

Convocation On The Face Of The Profession: Judicial Institute On Professionalism In The Law, Stephen J. Friedman

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Institutional Professionalism For Lawyers: Realizing The Virtues Of Civic Professionalism, Steven K. Berenson

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Price Of Law: How The Market For Lawyers Distorts The Justice System, Gillian K. Hadfield

Michigan Law Review

Bill Clinton's legal bills in connection with the Lewinsky scandal topped $10 million; the bill for Ken Starr's investigation of the President exceeded $50 million. The cost to the eight families portrayed in the bestseller A Civil Action for their tort suit against a manufacturing company accused of dumping hazardous chemicals into the water supply was $4.8 million (paid from a settlement of about $8 million); the cost for the defense exceeded $7 million. Lawyers who represented the three states in the nationwide suit by state attorneys general against tobacco companies to recoup smoking-related health care costs were awarded $8.2 …

Missed Manners In Courtroom Decorum, Catherine Thérèse Clarke

Maryland Law Review

No abstract provided.

Speculation By A Customer About The Future Of Large Law Firms, Duncan A. Mcdonald

Indiana Law Journal

The Growth of Large Law Firms and Its Effect on the Legal Profession and legal Education, Symposium

Theory And The Professions, Eliot Freidson

Indiana Law Journal

The Growth of Large Law Firms and Its Effect on the Legal Profession and Legal Education, Symposium

Should Lawyers Stick To Their Last?, Justin A. Stanley

Indiana Law Journal

The Growth of Large Law Firms and Its Effect on the Legal Profession and Legal Education, Symposium

Clinical Legal Education: The Case Against Separatism, Frank W. Munger

Cleveland State Law Review

In this article I attempt to support my conclusion that the future of clinical education lies in its contributions to the classroom, rather than in its function as an independent source of training. This last phase of the clinical movement is the most important, and will constitute the greatest contribution of clinicians to legal education. I will argue that the concerns of clinicians have stimulated the soundest recent thinking about improvements in legal education, and that, therefore, clinics should be used to develop innovations in teaching which can be applied to the traditional classroom. If my arguments are valid, then …