Legal Profession Commons^™

Ethics 20/20 Successfully Achieved Its Mission: It "Protected, Preserved, And Maintained", James E. Moliterno

James E. Moliterno

The legal profession tends to look inward and backward when faced with crisis and uncertainty. The legal profession could make greater advances by looking outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes of and connections with the legal profession’s crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with society, solve problems with rather than against the flow of society, and be more attuned to the society the profession claims to serve.

And Now A Crisis In Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

James E. Moliterno

The current crisis in legal education coincides with a crisis in the practice of law. Law practice has changed as a result of technology, globalization, and economic pressures. The market for legal education's product, law graduates, have diminished. Law schools cannot remain the same in this environment. Except for a very small number of elite schools, those that do not adjust are at serious risk of failing.

An economic change has taken place against a system in which mostly corporate clients willingly paid for the training of beginners at major law firms. Law firms could absorb those costs if partners …

The Trouble With Lawyer Regulation, James E. Moliterno

James E. Moliterno

The American legal profession has been a backward-looking, change-resistant institution. It has failed to adjust to changes in society, technology, and economics, despite individual lawyers' efforts to change their own practices and entrepreneurs' efforts to enter the legal marketplace to serve the needs of middle- and lower-income clients. When change does come, the legal profession is a late- arriver, usually doing no better than catching up to changes around it that have already become well ensconced. This failure robs society of what could be a positive role of the legal profession in times of change, and it deprives the profession …

The Future Of Legal Education Reform, James E. Moliterno

James E. Moliterno

The article discusses the criticism raised against legal education including high cost, disconnection between law schools and profession, and lack of employment opportunities. It examines the role of the bar examinations and reflects that the model in place is dysfunctional. It suggests that modern law school should teach students not only legal analysis but also business aspect of law practice such as project management and creative resolutions of disputes.

The New-Breed, “Die-Hard” Chinese Lawyer: A Comparison With American Civil Rights Cause Lawyers, James E. Moliterno, Rongjie Lan

James E. Moliterno

In times of social upheaval, lawyers can mark the way toward social change. In particular, when lawyers become more aggressive than traditional lawyers in the cause of fighting injustice, they face backlash from multiple sources, including government and their own profession. Such was the case during the U.S. civil rights movement. Unusually aggressive behavior by cause lawyers was met with hostility from their own profession and from government action. Those lawyers, while battered at times with physical violence, bar ethics charges, contempt of court, and state hostility, survived and changed social conditions at the same time they altered the culture …