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Full-Text Articles in Law
Peter Singer, Drowning Children, And Pro Bono, John M.A. Dipippa
Peter Singer, Drowning Children, And Pro Bono, John M.A. Dipippa
Faculty Scholarship
This Article uses the ethicist Peter Singer's principles to examine and critique the legal profession's pro bono efforts in the face of the persistent gap between the public's legal needs and their ability to meet them. Singer argues that adults should jump into a pond to save a drowning child. Using the drowning child as an analogy, this Article argues that lawyers are morally obligated to (1)increase the amount of their pro bono efforts, (2) be more selective in the cases they take, and (3) be significantly more generous in their financial support for legal services providers. These obligations are …
The Role Of Language Interpretation In Providing A Quality Mediation Process, Alexandra Carter, Shawn Watts
The Role Of Language Interpretation In Providing A Quality Mediation Process, Alexandra Carter, Shawn Watts
Faculty Scholarship
This paper focuses on the role of language in mediation and the challenges multiple language fluencies bring to the practice. Beginning with a discussion of the process and ethics of mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution, as distinct from other forms of dispute resolution including arbitration, the paper shifts to consider the importance of language. Language, and more specifically interpretation, plays a central role in the integrity of the mediation process and the quality of its outcomes. Each stage of mediation requires the participants and the mediator understand one another to ensure effective communication and a quality process. …
Virtuous Billing, Randy D. Gordon, Nancy B. Rapoport
Virtuous Billing, Randy D. Gordon, Nancy B. Rapoport
Faculty Scholarship
Aristotle tells us, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that we become ethical by building good habits and we become unethical by building bad habits: “excellence of character results from habit, whence it has acquired its name (êthikê) by a slight modification of the word ethos (habit).” Excellence of character comes from following the right habits. Thinking of ethics as habit-forming may sound unusual to the modern mind, but not to Aristotle or the medieval thinkers who grew up in his long shadow. “Habit” in Greek is “ethos,” from which we get our modern word, “ethical.” In Latin, habits are moralis, which …
Systematically Thinking About Law Firm Ethics: Conference On The Ethical Infrastructure And Culture Of Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney
Systematically Thinking About Law Firm Ethics: Conference On The Ethical Infrastructure And Culture Of Law Firms, Susan Saab Fortney
Faculty Scholarship
To advance the discourse related to law firm ethics and the impact of formal controls and informal influences on lawyer conduct, we convened on April 5, 2013 the Conference on the Ethical Infrastructure and Culture of Law Firms ("Conference" or "Symposium"). The Conference, conducted under the auspices of the Hofstra Law Review and the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University's Institute for the Study of Legal Ethics, was funded in part by the Abraham J. Gross '78 Conference and Lecture Fund at the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University. Experts who have studied issues …
I Don't Have Time To Be Ethical: Addressing The Effects Of Billable Hour Pressure, Susan Saab Fortney
I Don't Have Time To Be Ethical: Addressing The Effects Of Billable Hour Pressure, Susan Saab Fortney
Faculty Scholarship
This article discusses the unintended consequences of the billable hour derby and suggests changes to address the deleterious effects of increasing billable hour requirements. A brief introduction identifies law firms’ recent tendency to increase the billable hour requirements to fund the heightened salaries of associates. This article analyzes the results from an empirical study focused on the effects of billable hour expectations and firm cultures. Part I generally reviews the study findings. Part II discusses the work and report of the ABA Commission, while Part III indentifies those issues and approaches that the ABA and firm managers should explore. Recognizing …
'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
'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 …
Ethics Counsel's Role In Combating The "Ostrich" Tendency, Susan Saab Fortney
Ethics Counsel's Role In Combating The "Ostrich" Tendency, Susan Saab Fortney
Faculty Scholarship
This article focuses on ethics problems related to hourly billing by analyzing the results of a survey of 1000 randomly selected associates in Texas firms who (1) had been licensed for ten or fewer years as of June 1999, and (2) worked in private law firms with more than ten attorneys (the Associate Survey). This article addresses the need for firm managers to clarify how and what their attorneys should bill. The article reports the results from the Associate Survey relating to billing guidance and ethics systems. From the empirical data, the article identifies a need for supervising attorneys to …