Good Lawyer Research Articles

The Moral Compass of Law: Ensuring Ethical Standards Through Legal Education?

The aim of the article is to answer the question of the importance of legal education in ensuring legal ethics and the moral compass of a person by understanding the most important aspects of it. Methods applied include theoretical-scientific analysis, systematic and critical review of scientific literature and other relevant sources, normative and critical analysis of ethical principles in the context of legal education, empirical-quantitative and qualitative analysis of scholarly articles. According to the main thesis of this article, the integration of ethics into legal education can enhance moral development of future lawyers and improve their ability to serve justice. This paper traces the historical neglect of ethics in legal education and argues for its central place in modern studies. For lawyers to serve justice, a well-defined moral compass is essential. Several conclusions are drawn in this article, and first of all it is believed that universities will have to realise that a good lawyer is not only a professionally competent lawyer, because that is not enough in today’s world. Even if it is a personal journey, universities cannot stand aside, the future lawyer must be helped to grow. What is much more important is not so much the codes of ethics but how our moral compass works and what path it can point us down. To avoid getting lost, law schools could teach future lawyers how to empower their moral compass and find their way around. Each law teacher should have to find ways to teach the key virtues of a lawyer’s moral compass (e.g., wisdom, fortitude, temperance, and justice), how to help law students grow and not burn out in difficult situations. As our empirical research shows, the best scholarly articles on legal education discuss the elements of legal ethics. It is recognised that the ethics of lawyers is increasingly becoming an issue that goes beyond the professional aspects, and it is the university that must contribute to the development of the moral compass.

The Fragility of Legal Ethics: On the Role of Theory, Lawyerly Virtues, and Moral Remainders in the Life of a Good Lawyer

The Fragility of Legal Ethics: On the Role of Theory, Lawyerly Virtues, and Moral Remainders in the Life of a Good Lawyer

What Does It Take to Be a Good Lawyer? The Underpinnings of Success in a Rapidly Growing Legal Market

The study identified the principal professional domains leading to success in legal professions. Based on a sample of 300 Polish attorneys, with the use of confirmatory factor analysis and 22 specific items, four principal domains of success were discerned—professional skills, marketing skills, reputation, and ethics. The evolution of these domains in Poland between 2005 and 2017 was examined, revealing that the importance of marketing skills significantly increased, while the remaining three domains lost importance over the study period. The results also indicated that legal professionals were more inclined to value professional skills, marketing skills, and ethics when their clients had an ability to measure the quality of legal service provided. The same domains transpired as important for lawyers, who attributed high importance to the role of the bar.

“To Be a Good Lawyer, One Has to Be a Healthy Lawyer”: Lawyer Well-Being, Discrimination, and Discretionary Systems of Discipline

In 2017, a National Task Force on Lawyer Well-Being comprised mostly of representatives from lawyer assistance programs (LAPs) issued a report recommending “modify[ing] the rules of professional conduct to endorse well-being as part of a lawyer’s duty of competence.” This Article evaluates one of the premises underlying the report’s recommendations: “[t]o be a good lawyer, one has to be a healthy lawyer.” A review of medical studies and evidence offered by LAPs and others in support of these claims indicates that there is no empirical evidence that substance use and other mental health disorders “are leading causes of malpractice suits and ethical disciplinary actions against attorneys.” Further, medical evidence strongly suggests that many lawyer well-being interventions currently being proposed offer little to no mental health benefits and are more likely to prevent than encourage treatment engagement. This Article then evaluates professional well-being (or wellness) policies, communications, and ideology, focusing specifically on discrimination based on mental health disorders and disabilities. It contends that lawyer well-being policies and communications are likely to result in biased appraisals of lawyers under the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct 1.1, 1.16(a)(2), and 8.3(a), and act as a subterfuge for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. It also discusses the potential for well-being policies to create and sustain hierarchy, and result in discretionary systems of discipline and social control over the private conduct of legal employees. Finally, it concludes with recommendations to reinforce the employment rights of legal employees; eliminate the role of LAPs and associated entities in providing education about mental health and well-being; improve protections from unwarranted mental health inquiries and evaluations; and reject lawyer well-being policies and derogatory rhetoric that put people with mental health disorders and disabilities down.

The Good Lawyer: State-Led Professional Socialization in Contemporary China

How do authoritarian states define and communicate notions of appropriate work conduct and professional excellence? This article examines three channels of communication used by the Chinese state to signal professional expectations to the bar: the bar exam, the administrative rules governing lawyers, and the state-sanctioned National Outstanding Lawyer Award. We find that China’s state narrative about “the good lawyer” celebrates lawyers willing to work closely with the authorities and asks more stringent critics to separate private beliefs from public behavior. In contrast to assumptions often made in research on authoritarian law, this article highlights how lawyers can participate in politics without opposing the regime and how much work goes into curating an appealing state strand of legal professionalism rather than relying on coercion alone. We end with a call for future work on “varieties of legal professionalism” to better understand which state signals are most visible and persuasive to different segments of the Chinese bar, as well as the conditions under which alternate ideas about professionalism gain traction.

Philosophy and the Morality of Lawyers: Can a Good Lawyer Be a Good Person?

In the essay I critically analyse the gist of the discussion on whether lawyers must act in accordance with the advice of philosophers and whether the tenets of their personal morality allow them to be a good person at the end of the day. Usually it is often seen that the general ideologies suggested by philosophers often turn out to be speed bumps in a lawyer’s professional career. Ideologies such as being accountable to third parties while at the same time looking out for their clients’ best interests is seldom possible in the real/professional world. At this junction, I look forward to delve further into this criticism in order to throw some light over what road is usually taken by the professional world in such circumstances. Apart from this, I also expect to look at the ethics followed by lawyers while representing their clients and whether the lawyers are ready to go far enough to violate certain aspects of the law in order to look after their clients’ interests. Lastly I look forward to analyse whether philosophers’ reprimanding of lawyers is usually tolerated or not and also whether lawyers place morality above their professional duty or vice versa.

Canada's Law Societies Need a Civil Service

The law societies’ articulated mandate shows insufficient concern as to: (1) the threats to the legal profession’s markets presented by the commercial producers of legal services such as the very successful LegalZoom; and, (2) the legal profession’s political vulnerability due to its failure to try to solve the access to justice problem that is the unaffordability of legal services for middle and lower income people (the “A2J problem”). Theirs is a mentality of maintaining fixed and unchanged: (1) law society management infrastructure; (2) the “bencher mentality” of its lawyer-managers; and, (3) its 19th century institutional culture. That will bring about either, their replacement, but more likely their continued reduction in purpose, power, prestige, and lawyer membership. The price of the “bencher mentality” is inherently poor law society management by practicing lawyers. No longer is it possible to be both a good lawyer and a good bencher. Canada’s law societies need a national civil service so that its bencher-managers can act like an elected government’s Cabinet ministers, and not have to be its civil service as well. The cause of the A2J problem is, “there are no economies-of-scale in the practice of law.” For that reason, all of the manufacturing of goods and services has moved away from the “cottage industry” method of production that is still used by the legal profession, to various forms of “support services” methods of production. Automobile manufacturers have their “parts industries.” And no doctor’s office provides all medical treatments and remedies for all patients as does a law firm try to do for all clients. A civil service for law societies could establish such support services for the legal profession. Otherwise, affordable of legal services, beyond routine legal services, for middle and lower income people is not possible. This article sets out a long list of such support services. But, such a solution leaves in place, management by way of the “bencher mentality.” Lawyers like the opportunity to embellish their careers that the bencher position gives them. It can be helpful in becoming a judge and advancing the fortunes of one’s law firm. And, “organizations do not change until the fear of the consequences of not changing, is greater than the fear of the consequences of changing.” Until they fear the consequences of not changing, law societies will remain too devoted to maintaining their 19th century origins of institutional structure and culture. Then the only way the A2J problem will ever be solved is by way of some form of socialized law. Innovation requires pressure, but that pressure can be that provided by inducement as well as by fear. A support services method of production can help lawyers make money as well as serve their clients better.

Fatherhood, gender and the making of professional identity in large law firms: bringing men into the frame

AbstractThis paper reframes debates about gender equality in the legal professions by interrogating the practices of men and interconnections between fatherhood, gender and parenting within the specific context of large corporate law firms. Drawing on interviews with male lawyer-fathers, it argues that closer exploration of fatherhood reveals much about the gendered dynamics of identity formation as a legal professional in this sector. A set of ideas about fatherhood, the paper suggests, shape how men's work can define a distinctive gender identity as a ‘family man’ and good lawyer. Political-economic and cultural shifts around fatherhood, however, are reconfiguring and adapting gender relations in law in a number of contradictory ways with implications for understanding the place of men in relation to gender-equality agendas. Ideas about fatherhood, family, work and career, I argue, are mobilised and enmeshed within the reproduction of distinctive law-firm cultures and gendered ideas of organisational commitment. What, in short, might it mean to bebotha ‘good father’ and a ‘good lawyer’?

¿Qué caracteriza a un buen jurista? ¿Era Magnaud un buen juez?

Los puntos presentados en este documento pueden resumirse a continuación:1. La mentalidad de jurista se caracteriza por una peculiar técnica de argumentación que está en conflicto con el sentido común. Esto se debe al hecho de que un jurista tiene que trabajar con textos y conceptos definidos (o precedentes) y resolver varios problemas prácticos con una referencia a estos (en lugar de los sentimientos personales, la moralidad o la eficiencia).2. Otra cualidad típica es un enfoque de procedimiento práctico (por ejemplo, auditur et altera pars). Esto se remonta a varias generaciones de experiencia.3. La característica más llamativa de un buen jurista es el pensamiento de conexión dual. Esto requiere que un jurista cumpla con un criterio interno de argumentación (típicamente de jurista) y un criterio externo de evaluación. Este criterio externo significa que un buen jurista siempre debe tener en cuenta los intereses/valores en juego en el debate jurídico.4. En general, el criterio de evaluación normalmente no aparece explícitamente en la argumentación, sólo entre líneas e indirectamente. La argumentación teleológica puede ser, en circunstancias especiales, la excepción.5. Magnaud, el famoso juez francés de finales siglo XIX e inicio del siglo XX, cumplió con los criterios anteriores, por lo que fue realmente un buen jurista (o “buen juez” como se refleja en su epíteto). 6. Dependiendo del concepto de erudición jurídica utilizado, las declaraciones anteriores se aplican a las obras de la erudición legal sólo en una medida limitada o no se aplican para nada.

French Immigration—Demography Meets Politics: A Review Essay

French Immigration—Demography Meets Politics: A Review Essay

An Epic Viewpoint: An Interview with Judy Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems

An Epic Viewpoint: An Interview with Judy Faulkner, CEO of Epic Systems

Reconstructing the Voice of Authority

Notwithstanding the presence of three women on the United States Supreme Court, in terms of gender equality, surprisingly little has changed in the legal profession over the past twenty years. This stagnation is particularly apparent in the highest paying and most prestigious sectors, such as the Supreme Court bar, the top echelons of the top law firms, the judiciary, and the general-counsel’s office. Even where objective facts suggest that female lawyers should be hired, billed out, or compensated at the same or higher rate than their male peers, subjective decisions informed, in part, by bias and stereotype drive a different result. This Article proposes that, until we stop indoctrinating law students that a “good lawyer” looks, sounds, and presents like the Classical warrior — that is, a male — these barriers will persist. For many law students, the first place they get to model what it means to look, sound, and act like a lawyer is in moot court or other oral-argument exercises. Especially in light of an overall law-school culture that reinforces the significance of inborn abilities, it is not hard to see how moot court’s frequent emphasis on “natural” oral-advocacy talent, and its implicit connection of that talent to traits traditionally associated with men, can influence how students — and later lawyers — develop rigid conceptions of what a good lawyer looks, sounds, and acts like. And continuing to uncritically teach the values of Classical rhetoric — values inherited from a culture that silenced women’s voices in the public sphere — exacerbates the problem. This Article explores the dynamics and consequences of reinforcing the male paradigm in the way we coach and judge moot court and other oral-advocacy exercises, highlights some barriers to change, and proposes concrete steps legal educators, practitioners, and judges can take to help change what the voice of authority sounds like in the legal profession.

Access to Justice--Unaffordable Legal Services' Concepts and Solutions

Access to Justice--Unaffordable Legal Services' Concepts and Solutions

The Moral Lawyer and the Machiavellian Nature of Law Practice

In Western culture the name Niccolo Machiavelli has become Machiavellianism, a pejorative signifying the willingness to do anything to achieve desired ends. American lawyers do have limits, however, and are expected to operate according to an ethical code that is at least intended to prevent the worst abuses. The effectiveness of this ethical code has often been questioned, as have the questionable efforts of the organized bar to enforce its rules, but on the surface it differentiates law practice from hand-to-hand combat and military struggles. Even though I have sometimes used the concepts of the warrior lawyer, the general and the Machiavellian to communicate insights into the essence of the legal strategist, this does not signify that “anything goes.” This is particularly important to emphasize because becoming an effective legal strategist gives an individual more power, which for the responsible lawyer also means there is a greater need to be constantly aware of the dangers of going too far. Strategy as practiced by Sun Tzu in The Art of War and Musashi in A Book of Five Rings evolved in a different era and culture. Sun Tzu reportedly had two women who mocked him executed as his payment for winning the bet that elevated him to prominence with the Chinese emperor. Musashi claims to have killed more than sixty opponents in duels and has often been referred to as “a bloody old man.” In one situation he is reported to have accepted a duel from a challenger and set it up for a small island on the following morning. When the man landed on the island the skulking Musashi won the duel by sneaking up behind him and smashing his head in with an oar. The idea of a “fair fight” was obviously not at the core of the “bushwhacking” Musashi’s system of strategy. A fair number of lawyers most likely see nothing wrong with equivalent tactics in representing their clients and depending on the circumstances honesty requires me to include myself in that group.Lawyers work within a culture of deception, manipulation, and power. The advocate’s role is inherently deceptive rather than truth-directed. Aristotle captured this idea more than two millennia ago in describing the role of the advocate as one in which: “you must render the audience well-disposed to yourself, and ill-disposed to your opponent; you must magnify and depreciate [make whatever forms your case seem more important and whatever forms his case seem less].” Plato phrased it more poetically in saying the advocate “enchants the minds” of the courts of law, remarking, “rhetoric [is]...a universal act of enchanting the mind by arguments...[H]e who would be a skillful rhetorician has no need of truth — for that in courts of law men literally care nothing about truth, but only about conviction.” As these observations clearly suggest, manipulation of other humans is an inevitable and inescapable fact of our personal and professional lives. But there are moral limits to manipulation. All lawyers manipulate words, concepts, symbols, people and institutions. So do other people. If you practice law and don't manipulate the conditions of the environment in which you are operating (and especially other people), you aren't a very good lawyer. You may like to think of yourself as being a non-manipulative human being who doesn't take advantage of other people, but, for a lawyer, that is a disingenuous posture. We continually manipulate in our pleadings, interviews, investigations, discovery, and negotiations. We manipulate in trial, or we ought not be there. It is impossible for an effective advocate to avoid manipulating people, but not impossible to make moral choices about the limits of our behavior, and how far we are personally willing to go.

Law's 'Way of Words': Pragmatics and Textualist Error

Lawyers and judges cannot adequately address the nature of text, meaning, or interpretation without reference to the insights provided by linguists and philosophers of language. Exploring some of those insights, this article focuses upon what linguists and philosophers of language call “pragmatics.” Pragmatics examines the relations between words and users rather than the relations of words to words (syntax) or the relations of words to the world (semantics). In other words, pragmatics studies how language users actually use and interpret words and other signs in communication. Pragmatics recognizes that speaker meaning can differ from (and even contradict) linguistic meaning, including the literal meaning of text. In its proper context, for example, “Bob is indeed a good lawyer” can ironically mean just the opposite. Pragmatics also recognizes that relevant text is not a thing-in-itself that is simply given. Good lawyers look at such things as purpose and cohesion when determining relevant text. They do not simply take their opponent’s (or even their client’s) assertions of relevance. Pragmatics also provides lawyers with a number of specific concepts and tools which are helpful in determining speaker meaning. For user convenience, this article attempts to set out in one place a number of such concepts and tools. These include: (1) types of cohesion that help determine relevant text, (2) types of context that help determine meaning, (3) pragmatic principles of construction such as principles of relevance and politeness, and (4) important pragmatic notions or devices such as anaphora, cataphora, ellipsis, deixis, presupposition, unstated premises, entailment, and implementives.Finally, as a recurring example (among others) of pragmatics in action, this article examines from multiple perspectives textual issues raised in King v. Burwell, 576 U.S. __ (2015).

The Character of Legal Reasoning

Legal reasoning is unique and distinctive. Good legal reasoning is a combination of practical wisdom (phronesis), craft (techne), and rhetoric (rhetorica). When composed harmoniously, these concepts constitute the bedrock characteristics of the good lawyer and judge.

Editor's Corner: Law as Illumination, Not Literalism

American Business Law JournalVolume 52, Issue 2 p. v-x Editor's Corner Editor's Corner: Law as Illumination, Not Literalism Robert W. Emerson, Robert W. Emerson Editor in Chief, ABLJSearch for more papers by this author Robert W. Emerson, Robert W. Emerson Editor in Chief, ABLJSearch for more papers by this author First published: 04 June 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/ablj.12044Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Volume52, Issue2Summer 2015Pages v-x RelatedInformation

The Legal Ethics of Nelson Mandela

Can a good lawyer also be a good person? In answering in the affirmative, it is helpful to note the legal career of Nelson Mandela — a lawyer — and also a person recognized the world over as being a good person of ethical and moral excellence. The development of Mandela’s professional identity unfolded in the midst of his engagement with the core moral questions that all lawyers must face. Observing Mandela’s engagement with these ethical and moral questions is informative for law students and young attorneys also seeking to lead a professional life in the law that provides inspiration and moral substance. By retelling the story of the development of Nelson Mandela’s professional identity in the law, I hope to demonstrate that a good lawyer can be a good person, as Nelson Mandela was, through the pursuit of a number of different ideals.

Poets on Lawyers

The scholarship on law and literature has focused almost exclusively on fiction and drama, to the exclusion of nondramatic poetry. Yet a number of major English-language poets have produced work focusing on legal themes. This essay analyzes depictions of lawyers in the work of poets ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to the contemporary American writer Martin Espada. It distinguishes “good lawyer” poems from “bad lawyer” poems, noting variations within each type. Because of the relatively stable nature of the legal profession in the common-law countries, the poetry on this subject does not so much develop as circle around a common set of themes, allowing poets of different periods to speak to each other as virtual contemporaries.

Legal Education Reform and the Good Lawyer

The critics agree: law schools do it wrong. Stuck in early twentieth century practices that emphasize instruction in legal doctrine in large lecture halls, law schools fail to provide their students with the skills necessary to be practicing lawyers and to be marketable to prospective employers. They fail to instill in their students the “professional identity” necessary to achieve ethical legal practice. This article sounds a cautionary note with respect to those proposals for reform that reject the traditional emphasis on doctrinal teaching. In particular, and in contrast to the critics who view doctrinal learning as inconsistent with, or unrelated to, the creation of ethical lawyers, this article suggests that the emphasis on law in law school serves an essential function in creating ethical legal practice.