Legal Ethics and Legal Practice: Contemporary Issues

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019825945X ISBN 13: 9780198259459

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

This is the first collection of essays on legal ethics which addresses the subject comparatively. There is no similar work in the US. The empirical research from which the conference originally sprang remains a rare example of collaborative research between academic and practising lawyers. From the professor's side, public concern at the cost and quality of justice is forcing them to look beyond practitioners' manuals and the trade press for ideas.

From the academic side there is great interest in the study of ethics and culture in the legal profession and the answers which this study may provide to wider questions concerning the content and practice of law at the access to justice debate.

From the Back Cover:

This collection of essays on legal ethics addresses the subject comparatively, unlike any previous publication in either the UK or the US. Many of the papers originated from rare collaborative empirical research between academic and practising lawyers combining to produce a book that is unique in its concern with the issues that affect all lawyers in common law systems today. These lawyers are naturally apprehensive about the unprecedented investigation, criticism, and attack which they face. They fear for their livelihood and status in the community while sharing the public's sense of unease. Searching for immediate changes that might placate economic deregulators, the press and politicians, is one of the aims of this collection of original essays, many of which are written by people who are, or were, practitioners of law. This is reflected in the types of initiatives which are debated in this volume - to reform adversarial rules of procedure, to introduce mediational alternatives, and to curb systematic biases. The aims of this volume are therefore to reflect some of the key issues, to suggest possible arguments which might lead to solutions, and to provide readers, particularly those involved in practice, with strategies for devising more 'ethical' practices.