Law Commons^™

Whose Ethics? The Benchmark Problem In Legal Ethics Research, Elizabeth Chambliss

Faculty Publications

How should we interpret differences between junior and senior lawyers’ perceptions of ethicality in the workplace? One theory holds that junior lawyers are more reliable informants; that their perceptions are not yet corrupted by self-interest and the demands of practice and therefore will tend to be closer to universal or ordinary morality. This is the predominant theory in the academic literature on large law firms, which tends to portray large law firms as being in perpetual moral decline. To some extent, this corruption narrative informs all critical legal ethics research.

An alternative theory holds that junior lawyers are inexperienced and/or …

Abandoning An "Unethical" System Of Legal Ethics, David R. Barnhizer

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

It is time to abandon the pretense of "legal ethics" as an independent lawyer-run system and to design a civil liability system in which lawyers can be held accountable to wronged clients at reasonable costs with ready access and fair modes of proof. To the extent that the system of ethics actually caused lawyers to act "ethically" (which is a major and largely unsupportable supposition), the competitive dynamics of the legal profession, coupled with the significant decline in values, honesty, and accountability in American society, have rendered even that historically suspect system illegitimate. This does not mean that there are …

Trends And Challenges In Lawyer Regulation: The Impact Of Globalization And Technology, Laurel Terry, Steve Mark, Tahlia Gordon

Faculty Scholarly Works

Globalization and technology have changed the practice of law in dramatic ways. This is true not only in the United States, but around the world. In this article, author Laurel Terry, along with Australian regulators Steve Mark and Tahlia Gordon, documented some of these global trends in lawyer regulation. Their article concluded that regulators face issues in common regarding “who” is regulated, “what” or whom is regulated, “when” regulation occurs, “where” regulation occurs, “how” it occurs, and “why” regulation occurs. This article uses this who-what-when-where-why-and-how framework to discuss events around the world. These developments include the 2007 UK Legal Services …

No Laughing Matter: The Intersection Of Legal Malpractice And Professionalism, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

In an effort to increase professionalism among lawyers, an analysis of the relationship between lawyers' professional behavior and legal malpractice claims is warranted. This Article will explore that relationship, and address the need to fuse the two components in an effort to enhance professionalism. The Article will specifically seek to address the questions: (1) Should professionalism be admissible, or even conclusive, evidence of the standard of care of the "reasonable attorney" in legal malpractice cases? and (2) Will a proper definition of the "reasonable attorney" in the context of legal malpractice cases encourage and ultimately enhance professionalism in legal society?

Adopting Regulatory Objectives For The Legal Profession, Laurel Terry, Steve Mark, Tahlia Gordon

Faculty Scholarly Works

In 2007, the United Kingdom adopted a new law called the Legal Services Act. This Act radically changed certain aspects of U.K. lawyer regulation. Section 1 of that Act identified eight “regulatory objectives” that provide the basis for the regulation of the legal profession. The United Kingdom is not the only jurisdiction that has identified regulatory objectives. Most Canadian provinces, for example, have provisions that are tantamount to regulatory objectives. Australia routinely used “purpose statements” when enacting legal profession regulation and was in the process of developing regulatory objectives at the time this article was written. Despite these examples, however, …

That The Laws Be Faithfully Executed: The Perils Of The Government Legal Advisor, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Suppose you practice business law. Your client comes to you and says "We have a major deal in the works. It is aggressive and cutting edge, and we need an opinion from you saying that it is legal." Obviously, you cannot promise that. First, you need to know what the deal is. So, you examine the documents and carefully analyze the law. Unfortunately, you have only bad news to report: the deal is illegal, and there is no way to fix it. But with a little creative stretching of the law and some body English you could make a case …

Misplaced Fidelity, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This paper is a review essay of W. Bradley Wendel's Lawyers and Fidelity to Law, part of a symposium on Wendel's book. Parts I and II aim to situate Wendel's book within the literature on philosophical or theoretical legal ethics. I focus on two points: Wendel's argument that legal ethics should be examined through the lens of political theory rather than moral philosophy, and his emphasis on the role law plays in setting terms of social coexistence in the midst of moral pluralism. Both of these themes lead him to reject viewing legal ethics as an instance of "the …

Dichotomy No Longer? The Role Of The Private Business Sector In Educating The Future Russian Legal Professions, Philip Genty

Faculty Scholarship

In his 1916 work The Law: Business or Profession?, Julius Henry Cohen describes an American legal system in which uniform standards for regulating, disciplining, and educating the profession are just beginning to be developed, albeit unevenly. In discussing the differences between a business and a profession, he argues that a profession requires a uniform set of standards to guide it in matters of ethics, as well as a system of rigorous legal education that includes a firm grounding in these ethical principles.

Perhaps most surprising for a book written in the early twentieth century – long before the …