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Full-Text Articles in Law
Jews, Christians, Lawyers, And Money, Thomas L. Shaffer
Jews, Christians, Lawyers, And Money, Thomas L. Shaffer
Journal Articles
Years ago, when I was the resident guru in legal ethics at Washington and Lee University, in the little mountain town of Lexington, Virginia, a reporter from the daily newspaper in Roanoke asked me to identify the most serious ethical issue for American lawyers. My answer: "Money."
Part of that answer reflected the fact that American lawyers make about twice as much money as lawyers in other "developed" countries. And American lawyers make, on the average, fifty percent more than average Americans do. (Reference to averages and means here do not reflect how steep the incline is from the middle …
On Living One Way In Town And Another Way At Home, Thomas L. Shaffer
On Living One Way In Town And Another Way At Home, Thomas L. Shaffer
Journal Articles
The title of this Lecture is from Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The occasion for the proposition is when the smalltown southern gentleman-lawyer Atticus Finch is given an opportunity to lie to protect his son from harm. He refuses. He says that the most important thing he has for his son is not protection but integrity. He says, "I can't live one way in town and another way in my home. "
The separation of town from home is an old one in the history of lawyers in America. When you trace the nineteenth-century development of legal ethics, …
On Teaching Legal Ethics In The Law Office, Thomas L. Shaffer
On Teaching Legal Ethics In The Law Office, Thomas L. Shaffer
Journal Articles
Edward J. Murphy, my teacher, colleague, and friend, was as devoted as anyone at Notre Dame could be, to a Christian law school on this campus. He announced a personal and institutional claim, and he expressed his hope as well, when he told our graduating law class, in 1994, that this is "a school which publicly and without apology proclaims its religious roots."
And he was as interested as anyone could be in identifying those religious roots, and exploring the implications of them for the practice of law at the end of the twentieth century in the United States of …
Inaugural Howard Lichtenstein Lecture In Legal Ethics: Lawyer Professionalism As A Moral Argument, Thomas L. Shaffer
Inaugural Howard Lichtenstein Lecture In Legal Ethics: Lawyer Professionalism As A Moral Argument, Thomas L. Shaffer
Journal Articles
The recurrent movement to call or recall lawyers to professionalism is a moral argument. It is an argument made to individual lawyers, a claim among lawyers, that professionalism has to do with being a good person.
I see two aspects to the claim that professionalism is a moral value: one aspect says to a person "be professional." It is an admonition to virtue. The other aspect says to a person, "be in the profession—be of it," with an appeal that seems familiar from other admonitions we have heard to align ourselves with groups that are supposed to make us better …