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The Legal Persona: An Essay On The Professional Mask, James R. Elkins

Law Faculty Scholarship

The legal profession offers little opportunity for the practitioner to analyze the fundamental constructs underlying the legal system or the dynamics of the lawyering process. Jurisprudence and legal education traditionally have emphasized the external aspects of law, implying that man is a rational decisionmaker who freely controls his life and shapes societal institutions., This approach is unrealistic because it neglects the psychological dimension of man and the complexity of man's behavior. Jurisprudential scholars and legal educators should recognize that a growing body of sophisticated literature in linguistics and anthropology as well as social psychology and psychiatry is also relevant to …