Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Law As Social Work, Jane H. Aiken, Stephen Wizner

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In our work as lawyers for low income clients and as clinical teachers, we are sometimes told by our professional counterparts in private practice - especially those who work in large corporate firms - that what we do "isn't law, it's social work." Similarly, our students sometimes complain that the work they do on behalf of low income clients "isn't law, it's social work." In the past we have tended to respond to this "social worker" charge defensively. We insisted that what we and our students do is "law," that it is really no different from what private practitioners do …

Ethics, Law Firms, And Legal Education, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A rash of recent corporate scandals has once again put professional ethics in the spotlight. It's hard to pick up the Wall Street Journal each day and not read that authorities have launched a new investigation or that additional indictments are imminent. Stories of financial fraud and outright looting have galvanized the public and shaken the economy. What ethical lessons can we draw from these events? Two explanations seem especially prominent. The first is a story of individuals without an adequate moral compass. Some people's greed and ambition were unchecked by any internal ethical constraints. For such deviants, no amount …

Rogue Science, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This review essay considers the tension between the evidence-driven vision of science's mission and the fears of malicious use and terrible consequences that have come to the fore since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These fears have led some to call for government restrictions on the substance of scientific research and communication. In general, this approach is likely to do far more harm than good. But scientists need to take the problem of social consequences more seriously than they have so far. The author argues in this essay that in some circumstances, when rogue use of science can …

Professional Discipline For Law Firms? A Response To Professor Schneyer’S Proposal, Julie R. O'Sullivan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Model Rule of Professional Conduct 5.1(a) requires individual partners to make "reasonable efforts" to ensure that their firm has measures in effect that give "reasonable assurance" that all lawyers in the firm conform to ethical rules. Similarly, Model Rule 5.3(a) imposes upon individual partners the obligation of making "reasonable efforts" to ensure that the firm has measures in place giving "reasonable assurance" that the conduct of non-lawyers affiliated with the firm is compatible with the partner's professional obligations. These rules were adopted to encourage firms to create firm cultures and institute prophylactic policies and procedures--an "ethical infrastructure"--that would prevent misconduct …

When Lawyers And Law Firms Invest In Their Corporate Clients’ Stock, Donald C. Langevoort

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I will state my conclusion at the outset. I am not convinced that lawyers' investments in clients in lieu of fees are problematic enough from a conflicts standpoint that the rules of professional responsibility should treat them as presumptively inconsistent with the lawyer's fiduciary responsibility. Lawyers' investments in their clients do raise interesting and unsettling issues, but these issues are not qualitatively different from issues raised by many other norms or practices within the legal profession that also threaten lawyerly objectivity. Indeed, in contrast to some other practices, these fee arrangements can, in some respects, enhance objectivity, or at least …

The Lawyer As Consensus Builder: Ethics For A New Practice, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Article, I explore the roles of lawyers in alternative dispute resolution ("ADR"), including traditional roles in arbitration and "new" roles in mediation and facilitation. I also discuss how conventional ethics rules for lawyers fail to provide guidance and "best practices" for lawyers who serve in these new roles. State legislatures and professional associations, such as the American Arbitration Association ("AAA"), the Center for Public Resources Institute for Dispute Resolution ("CPR"), and the Association of Conflict Resolution, have adopted ethical codes for mediators and arbitrators. Select professional associations are also developing "best practice" guides for the provision of ADR …

The Bounds Of Zeal In Criminal Defense: Some Thoughts On Lynne Stewart, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What caused Lynne Stewart, after more than two decades of defense lawyering in the best tradition of the legal profession to cross the line? Holding aside the political climate of the times, did Stewart's approach to lawyering--whether in political or not terribly political cases--lead to her demise? Is her approach to lawyering different from most of the bar?

This paper discusses the conduct that led to Stewart's prosecution and her approach to lawyering generally. The author examines whether her view of zeal and devotion is at odds with the prevailing ethics and ethos of defense lawyering, and, if not, what …

Trust And Betrayal In The Medical Marketplace, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The author argues in this Comment that disingenuity as first resort is an unwise approach to the conflict between our ex ante and our later, illness-endangered selves. Not only does rationing by tacit deceit raise a host of moral problems, it will not work, over the long haul, because markets reward deceit's unmasking. The honesty about clinical limit-setting that some bioethicists urge may not be fully within our reach. But more candor is possible than we now achieve, and the more conscious we are about decisions to impose limits, the more inclined we will be to accept them without experiencing …

The Inside Scoop: What Federal Judges Really Think About The Way Lawyers Write, Kristen Konrad Robbins-Tiscione

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A recent survey indicates that what troubles federal judges most is not what lawyers say but what they fail to say when writing briefs. Although lawyers do a good job articulating legal issues and citing controlling, relevant legal authority, they are not doing enough with the law itself. Only fifty-six percent of the judges surveyed said that lawyers “always” or “usually” make their client’s best arguments. Fifty-eight percent of the judges rated the quality of the legal analysis as just “good,” as opposed to “excellent” or “very good.” The problem seems to be that briefs lack rigorous analysis, and the …

A Midrash On Rabbi Shaffer And Rabbi Trollope, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thomas Shaffer is the most unusual, and in many ways the most interesting, contemporary writer on American legal ethics. A lawyer impatient with legalisms and hostile to rights-talk, a moral philosopher who despises moral philosophy, a Christian theologian who refers more often to the rabbis than to the Church Fathers, a former law school dean who is convinced that law schools have failed their students by teaching too much law and too little literature, a traditionalist who' wholeheartedly embraces feminism, an apologist for the conservative nineteenth-century gentleman who describes his own politics as "left of center," Shaffer is a complex …

To Our Children's Children's Children: The Problems Of Intergenerational Ethics, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay serves as the introduction to the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review's symposium on intergenerational justice. The importance of this topic cannot be overstated. Intergenerational ethics bears on questions of environmental policy, health policy, intellectual property law, international development policy, social security policy, telecommunications policy, and a variety of other issues.

Part II, Clarifying the Problems of Intergenerational Ethics, is a first sketch of the scope and nature of intergenerational justice, introducing a variety of cases and contexts in which issues of intergenerational ethics arise and distinguishing between the political and moral dimensions of these issues. Part …

Can You Be A Good Person And A Good Prosecutor?, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Somehow, it is understood that prosecutors have the high ground. Most people simply assume that prosecutors are the good guys, wear the white hats, and are on the "right" side. Most law students contemplating a career in criminal law seem to think this. It could be that most practicing lawyers think this, as well.

Prosecutors represent the people, the state, the government. This is very noble, important, and heady stuff. Prosecutors seek truth, justice, and the American way. They are the ones who stand up for the victims and would-be victims, the bullied and battered and burgled. They protect all …

The Market For Medical Ethics, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

At the core of Kenneth Arrow’s classic 1963 essay on medical uncertainty is a claim that has failed to carry the day among economists. This claim—that physician adherence to an anti-competitive ethic of fidelity to patients and suppression of pecuniary influences on clinical judgment pushes medical markets toward social optimality—has won Arrow near-iconic status among medical ethicists (and many physicians). Yet conventional wisdom among health economists, including several participants in this symposium, holds that this claim is either naïve or outdated. Health economists admire Arrow’s article for its path-breaking analysis of market failures resulting from information asymmetry, uncertainty, and moral …

Can They Do That? Legal Ethics In Popular Culture: Of Characters And Acts, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Essay describes the depiction of modern lawyers' professional ethics in literature, films, and television, and distinguishes between personal and professional character and specific acts. Depictions of lawyers in modern popular culture are more complex and nuanced than older treatments and allow law students, lawyers, and legal academics an opportunity to examine both ethical rule violations and "micro" behavioral choices, as well as character and more "macro" professional career choices and philosophies in a variety of contexts and serialized plot, treatments. Treatments of professional ethics in more recent popular culture are also contrasted to more literary examinations of both lawyers' …

Joseph In Lawyerland, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

As Alice wanders through Wonderland in an unreal space in real time-a dream-learning backward truths from illogical creatures who speak in paradoxes, so Joseph figuratively wanders through lawyerland in an unreal time, but in a very real space-Manhattan-conversing with his thinly fictionalized friends, all of whom happen to be lawyers, about their lives and practices in law. As Joseph's lawyers talk with him about the law they practice, they uncover, through White Rabbit and Cheshire Cat-like illogical precision, a chaotic, unkempt, unconscionably reckless, often cruel, and sometimes pathological legal wilderness. The legal terrain these lawyers occupy is not an inviting …

Reconstructing The Rule Of Law, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The action taken in Bush v. Gore by the five conservative Justices on the United States Supreme Court, Bugliosi argued, was not just wrong as a matter of law, but criminal: It was a malem in se, fully intended, premeditated theft of a national election for the Presidency of the United States. Now, as Balkan and Levinson would argue, this seventh, "prosecutorial" response -- that the Court's action was not just wrong but criminal -- is also not available to a devotee of either radical or moderate indeterminacy. Even assuming both criminal intent and severe harm-a wrongful, specific intent to …

Ethics In Adr: The Many "Cs" Of Professional Responsibility And Dispute Resolution, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I have been teaching both alternative dispute resolution ("ADR") and professional responsibility for a long time, and I will devote the majority of this essay to reporting on some of the enormous changes and developments in this field. However, I will begin with a mea culpa at a higher level of ethical consciousness than the rules that govern us, or are about to govern us, typically use. I have spent the last five years of my life writing ethical rules for ADR, and I am worried about the future of this field. There are many changes occurring in ADR, and …

Caretakers And Collaborators, Maxwell Gregg Bloche

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A chilling subplot in the twentieth-century saga of state-sponsored mass murder, torture, and other atrocities was the widespread incidence of medical complicity. Nazi doctors’ human “experiments” and assistance in genocidal killing are the most oft-cited exemplar, but wartime Japanese physicians’ human vivisection and other grotesque practices rivaled the Nazi medical horrors. Measured by these standards, Soviet psychiatrists’ role in repressing dissent, Latin American and Turkish military doctors’ complicity in torture, and even the South African medical profession’s systematic involvement in apartheid may seem, to some, almost prosaic. Yet these and other reported cases of medical complicity in human rights abuse …

Telling Stories In School: Using Case Studies And Stories To Teach Legal Ethics, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this Foreword I will explore why we use stories and case studies (and whether stories and case studies are equal to the task) to examine ethical and moral issues in the practice of law and provide an introduction to the interesting tales which will enfold in this Symposium issue. I conclude with some thoughts about how stories and cases should be used to teach legal ethics.

Is The Rule Of Law Cosmopolitan?, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

What I will argue in the bulk of the paper is that whether or not the rule of law implies ethical cosmopolitanism depends: it depends on how we understand or interpret the legalistic sense of justice that law and the rule of law seemingly require. The virtue that we sometimes call legal justice, and the correlative meaning of the rule of law to which it is yoked, can plausibly be subjected to a range of different interpretations, each resting on quite different understandings of the point of law and of what the individual law is meant to protect. Some of …

Ensuring Able Representation For Publicly-Funded Criminal Defendants: Lessons From England, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While there are skilled private defense lawyers who enthusiastically represent indigent criminal defendants, too often defense lawyers whose income depends upon appointments provide deplorable representation. The problem is well known and pervasive. In addition to the blizzard of claims on appeal of ineffective representation, defenders' efforts have been savaged by judges and by fellow lawyers. These nagging problems persist: to induce private lawyers to represent their clients effectively by eliciting the defendant's story and managing their relationship in a way that at least does not displease the defendant; investigating his and the prosecution's positions; pressing the prosecution for discovery, for …

The Zealous Advocacy Of Justice In A Less Than Ideal Legal World, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In The Practice of Justice, William Simon addresses a widely recognized dilemma -- the moral degradation of the legal profession that seems to be the unpleasant by-product of an adversarial system of resolving disputes -- with a bold claim: Lawyers involved in either the representation of private rights or the public interest should be zealous advocates of justice, rather than their clients' interests. If lawyers were to do what this reorientation of their basic identity would dictate -- that is, if lawyers were to zealously pursue justice according to law, rather than zealously pursue through all marginally lawful means whatever …

Contrived Ignorance, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Lawyers often complain that it's hard to get clients to tell them the unvarnished truth. But it can be an equal challenge to avoid facts that the lawyer really doesn't want to know. Criminal defense lawyers rarely ask their clients, "Did you do it?" Instead, they ask the client what evidence he thinks the police or prosecution have against him-whom he spoke with, who the witnesses are, what documents or physical evidence he knows about. If the client seems too eager to spill his guts, the lawyer will quickly cut him off, admonishing him that time is short and that …

Limiting Secret Settlements By Law, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

I'm in the most embarrassing, impossible situation for a commentator- namely, agreeing fundamentally with what the principal speaker said. In fact, I wrote an article against secret settlements in the GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL in 1995. If Monroe Freedman were here, he would explain to us that progress in ideas comes from contention and the testing of hypotheses by marshalling the strongest arguments against them. Since he's not, I will nevertheless take that as my charge. Despite the fact that I agree with Richard on the ethical drawbacks of secret settlements, I'd like to begin by talking about what I think …

Faculty Pro Bono And The Question Of Identity, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

My aim in this essay is to explain and defend a simple proposition, which I'll call the pro bono thesis: law teachers and law schools have the same pro bono responsibilities as lawyers and law firms. By "pro bono" I mean something more particular than community service or civic involvement. I mean free or reduced-rate legal work for those who cannot afford to pay for it. The pro bono thesis is that law teachers and law schools have pro bono responsibilities in this sense.

Ethics And Professionalism In Non-Adversarial Lawyering, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Traditional notions and rules of professionalism in the legal profession have been premised on particular conceptions of the lawyer's role, usually as an advocate, occasionally as a counselor, advisor, transaction planner, government official, decision maker and in the recent parlance of one of this symposium's participants-a "statesman [sic]. '" As we examine what professionalism means and what rules should be used to regulate its activity, it is important to ask some foundational questions: For what ends should our profession be used? What does law offer society? How should lawyers exercise their particular skills and competencies?

Taking Problem Solving Pedagogy Seriously: A Response To The Attorney General, Carrie Menkel-Meadow

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Attorney General Janet Reno has taken seriously the notion that lawyers should make the world better than they find it, that problems should be prevented, where possible, before they occur, and that law should serve the needs of the people and deliver long-term justice. I want to suggest some concrete ways in which we can take her challenges seriously.

Ex Post Facto Payments In Legally-Aided Criminal Cases In The Old Bailey, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

A much more pervasive scheme for overseeing the reasonableness of fees charged by legal professionals exists in England than in the United States. In England, for example, with or without a specific agreement over the fee, the client can challenge the solicitor's charges, and the court or the Law Society will assess their reasonableness.' Similarly, as part of assigning costs to the losing party, the reasonableness of the winning solicitor's claim for fees is evaluated. The lay client can even dispute the reasonableness of the barrister's fee after the fact.

In the United States, by contrast, lawyers hammer out agreements …

Representing Indigents In Serious Criminal Cases In England's Crown Court: The Advocates' Performance And Incentives, Peter W. Tague

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

While indigent defendants charged with serious criminal offenses can be represented by lawyers in the United States and by barristers and solicitors in England and Wales. Gauging the quality of that help is an important but elusive inquiry. This article has two purposes: to map how the indigent criminal defendant charged with very serious offenses is represented in England's Crown Court, and to examine whether economic incentives can induce the defendant's representatives to perform as expected.

While barristers profess to be skilled advocates, and while many lawyers have likewise extolled the barrister's advocacy, testing the point is extremely difficult. Apart …

Cleaning Up The Legal Debris Left In The Wake Of Whitewater, Susan Low Bloch

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

We have learned a lot in the twenty-five years since Watergate. During the scandal itself, we confirmed that the President is not above the law. We learned that executive privilege is constitutionally protected, but that it is not absolute. And, we learned that a need exists for an independent counsel, but that we don't necessarily need a statute to establish such an office.

Watergate and the Nixon era spawned several so-called "reforms": the establishment of the independent counsel statute, presidential immunity from civil damage suits for official action, and public ownership of the President's official papers. It is interesting and …