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Liberal egalitarianism and critical legal studies: articles of conciliation Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Matthew McManus
Liberal egalitarian jurisprudence and critical legal studies have often been at odds, despite sharing a core of set of political and analytical commitments. This paper makes the case for their conc...
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Consequentialism and problem of role morality in legal ethics Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Martin Hapla
One of the frequent philosophical problems of legal ethics is the conflict between common and role morality. This situation is where a lawyer's actions are evaluated differently by these two sets o...
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Should judges be temperate in their speech? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2024-04-17 Jana Stehlíková
It is not easy to find a fair balance between inappropriate speech on the one hand and the appearance of constraint and inaccessibility on the other. Also judges must deal with this difficult task....
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Judging without railings: an ethic of responsible judicial decision-making for future generations Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-08-22 Laura Davies, Laura Henderson
Climate litigation presents specific challenges to judicial decision-making, related to uncertainties caused by the border-crossing nature of the applicable legal frameworks and the complexity of t...
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The case of David vs. Goliath. On legal ethics and corporate lawyering in large-scale liability cases Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Iris van Domselaar, Ruth de Bock
A classic avenue that victims can take to hold a corporation to account and obtain redress for the harms they have suffered is civil litigation. In the past decades, such attempts have been pursued...
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Loyalty to client, conviction, or constitution? The moral responsibility of public professionals under illiberal state pressures Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-08-05 Rutger Claassen
Public professionals do not only serve their clients but also – by doing so – the public at large. The state often has a direct grip on their work, through financing, regulation or otherwise. This ...
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‘Overcoming a clash of absolutes: the conflicting ethical demands posed by access to medicines litigation confronted by Latin American judges’ Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Javier Couso
This article analyses the conflicting professional ethical demands imposed on judges to, on the one hand, faithfully apply the existing law of the land and, on the other hand, do justice in the fac...
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Special issue: professional ethical judgment for global challenges Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Laura Henderson, Elaine Mak, Thom Snijders
Published in Legal Ethics (Vol. 26, No. 1, 2023)
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A code of judicial ethics as a signpost and a beacon: on virtuous judgecraft and Dutch climate litigation Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-07-18 Elaine Mak
This paper analyses the role of a code of ethics for judges in connection to a contemporary definition of responsive ‘T-shaped’ judicial professionalism and the professional-ethical questions which...
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Facilitating professional normative judgement through science-policy interfaces: the case of anthropogenic land subsidence in the Netherlands Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Dries Hegger, Peter Driessen, Esther Stouthamer, Heleen Mees
Science-policy interactions can both facilitate and hamper professional normative judgement, i.e. a value judgement about the desirability of a certain situation. Anthropogenic land subsidence, con...
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Virtuous judges, politicisation, and decision-making in the judicialized legal landscape Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-07-13 Thom Snijders
In recent years, a growing body of work has emerged in legal theory that focuses on the relationship between law and virtue. Part of this virtue jurisprudence literature deals with the role of virt...
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Lawyers’ ethical and practice norms in mediation: including emotion as part of the Australian Guidelines for Lawyers in Mediation Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-06-24 Kathy Douglas, Lola Akin Ojelabi
ABSTRACT Lawyers’ practice in mediation is evolving with the widespread use of processes other than litigation which have been commonly referred to as the alternative dispute resolution (‘ADR’) options in Australia. Legal representation in mediation is part of the changing nature of legal work and is informed by the Australian Solicitors’ Conduct Rules (‘ASCR’) and practice guidelines. This article
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Editorial Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-06-20 Lisa Webley
Published in Legal Ethics (Vol. 25, No. 1-2, 2022)
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Valuing diverse students: an ethical response to building success in first-year law students and broadening the legal profession Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-05-13 Anna Cody, Sandy Noakes
ABSTRACT Currently, most legal professions are not representative of the communities which they serve. They do not proportionally include diverse members of the community, nor ensure there are diverse practitioners represented in all areas of practice and at senior levels. This impacts on access to justice, a key premise of the law and legal system. One step to make the legal profession more diverse
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Trends in legal ethics research: a bibliometric analysis Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-05-04 Lijana Valanciene, Dovile Valanciene
ABSTRACT This article explains the main theoretical aspects of legal ethics, identifies the nature and intellectual structures of legal ethics research, and examines the occurrences, relationships, interconnections, developments and emerging trends of the topic of legal ethics in global legal research, using one of the methods of scientometrics – bibliometric analysis. The annual growth of legal research
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The bounds of legality: an exploration of the limits on ethical advocacy in family law Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2023-04-27 Deanne Sowter
ABSTRACT It seems to be commonly understood that sometimes a family lawyer’s advocacy can go too far; however, absent disciplinary proceedings or a claim in negligence, it is not always easy to identify exactly what line a lawyer has crossed. A lawyer’s role, properly understood, is to pursue their client’s interests within the bounds of legality. In this paper, I examine the positivist conception
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The discipline of, and failure to sanction, sexual misconduct by Australian legal practitioners Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Jennifer Sarah Schulz, Christine Forster, Kate Diesfeld
ABSTRACT This article examines disciplinary proceedings about sexual misconduct by lawyers. Sexual misconduct in a professional relationship is harmful and unacceptable and should result in immediate disciplinary action to protect victims, future victims and the public. However, there is no explicit offence of sexual misconduct in Australian disciplinary legislation regarding lawyers. Rather, sexual
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Ethics in practice in asylum law: asylum legal aid lawyers’ moral reasoning in respect of ‘hopeless cases’ Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Tamara Butter
ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is twofold: first, it seeks to provide a better understanding of lawyers’ ethics in practice in the field of publicly funded asylum law. It does so by examining Dutch asylum legal aid lawyers’ moral reasoning in respect of the ethically challenging issue of ‘the hopeless case’, employing a version of Christine Parker’s four approaches to moral reasoning in legal practice:
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‘To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger’: the vulnerability of the young lawyer in ethical crisis Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Jane Ching, Graham Ferris, Jane Jarman
ABSTRACT This paper takes as its starting point the phenomenon of young lawyers in ethical crisis. The teaching of ethics in the classroom and the ethos and environment of the law firm have created dissonance: knowing what it is right to do but being unable to do it. In examining this phenomenon, we develop the idea of commitment as a source of duty, loyalty, and courage that enables someone to accept
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Editorial Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-07-14 Lisa Webley
Published in Legal Ethics (Vol. 24, No. 2, 2021)
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Agency over technocracy: how lawyer archetypes infect regulatory approaches: the FCA example Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Trevor Clark, Richard Moorhead, Steven Vaughan, Alan Brener
ABSTRACT In this article, we look at the contested role of in-house lawyers in regulated organisations in the financial sector. A recent Financial Conduct Authority consultation on whether to designate the head of legal of banks, insurance companies and other financial firms as ‘Senior Managers’ and the decision which flowed from it, reflected a flawed view of lawyers as a neutral technocracy of mere
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‘Fit and proper’ coders? How might legal service delivery by non-lawyers be regulated? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-03-13 Felicity Bell, Justine Rogers
ABSTRACT With an upsurge of interest and investment in new legal technologies comes consideration of who is making them and whether these individuals or entities should be subject to regulation. This article looks at how such regulation might function in light of the existing regulatory regimes governing lawyers and the capacities of legal regulators. It considers the ramifications both of maintaining
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The grey zone: the implications of the ageing legal profession in Australia Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2022-03-08 Angela Melville, Valerie Caines, Marcus Walker
ABSTRACT Lawyers in many jurisdictions are ageing, and yet there is little information concerning the age profile of the legal profession. This paper presents the first consideration of the age profile of lawyers outside of the US, showing that Australian lawyers are ageing and delaying retirement. These findings have serious implications. Problems associated with a growing proportion of older lawyers
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Soft law, legal ethics and the corporate lawyer: confronting human rights and sustainability norms Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2021-10-29 Sara L. Seck, Richard Devlin, Siobhan Quigg
(2021). Soft law, legal ethics and the corporate lawyer: confronting human rights and sustainability norms. Legal Ethics: Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 1-3.
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Lawyers are not algorithms: sustainability, corruption, and the role of the lawyer in institutional frameworks and corporate transactions Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2021-09-20 Larry Catá Backer
ABSTRACT Among key emerging societal principles to which a lawyer owes a high degree of fidelity are those that advance sustainability and that combat corruption. This essay considers the character of those ethical obligations when sustainability and corruption principles are manifested against the needs of institutions and the objectives of ‘deals’. Part 1 briefly introduces the challenge of lawyer
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Professional responsibility and the defence of extractive corporations in transnational human rights and environmental litigation in Canadian courts Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Amy Salyzyn, Penelope Simons
ABSTRACT Lawyers defending extractive corporations in transnational human rights and environmental cases tend to reflect the dominant ‘resolute advocacy’ model of litigation, which directs lawyers to aggressively pursue clients’ interests though all available means. Is a different vision of advocacy more appropriate in this context? In answering this question, we look to the rule of law foundation
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The corporate general counsel who respects human rights Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2021-10-07 John F. Sherman III
ABSTRACT Global soft law (notably the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights ‘UNGPs’), multistakeholder norms, the business practices and policies of leading companies, the expectations of investors and stakeholders, and hard law in a growing number of jurisdictions, all expect that businesses should respect human rights in their operations and in their value chains. The COVID 19 pandemic
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Be careful what you wish for: a European perspective on the limits of CSR in the legal profession Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Birgit Spiesshofer
ABSTRACT Law firms, bars and lawyers associations qualify as ‘enterprises’ in the sense of all international CSR norms such as the UN Global Compact, the UN Guiding Principles, the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and ISO 26000 Guidance on Social Responsibility. Thus, these CSR norms apply to law firms and lawyers in principle. Lawyers are, however, not only service providers. They have
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Editorial Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-12-26 Lisa Webley
(2020). Editorial. Legal Ethics: Vol. 23, No. 1-2, pp. 1-2.
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Practising law for rich and poor people: towards a more progressive approach Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Allan C. Hutchinson
It is 50 years since Stephen Wexler’s essay, Practicing Law for Poor People, was published. 1 By any reasonable measure, this has become and remains an iconic piece. Whether he is agreed with or di...
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Entity regulation, litigation rights and the changing meaning of professionalism at the Bar of England and Wales Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Marc Mason
ABSTRACT The Legal Services Act 2007 provided a framework for a liberalised marketplace for legal services. The most significant responses to this by the Bar appear in the Bar Standards Board Handbook, which was first released in January 2014. This included changes allowing for barristers to engage in litigation and enabling the Bar Standards Board to regulate entities rather than just individual barristers
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Ethical imperatives for legal educators to promote law student wellbeing Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Nigel Duncan, Rachael Field, Caroline Strevens
ABSTRACT There is currently a debate about resilience and wellbeing of law students and legal practitioners. Tension has developed between a movement promoting the wellbeing of students and those who criticise that movement for individualising responsibility and enabling managers to evade their responsibilities. This article seeks a constructive resolution of that tension. It proposes ethical obligations
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Reflection and clinical legal education: how do students learn about their ethical duty to contribute towards justice Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Anna Cody
ABSTRACT This article analyses teaching reflection skills as a means to inculcate students’ capacity to contribute to justice. Arising out of understandings of professionalism, the rule of law, as well as model codes of conduct for solicitors, lawyers have an ethical duty to contribute to building the justice of law and the legal system. Learning how to reflect is an essential part of being able to
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Bar exams, legal ethics and the fight against corruption: lessons from Brazil Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Kim Economides, Joaquim Leonel de Rezende Alvim
ABSTRACT In this article we explain the specific contribution of Bar exams to the professional socialisation of Brazilian lawyer leaders through examining their changing content, particularly the coverage of and balance between commercial and public interests. Understanding what drives curriculum change, as reflected in vocational assessment, could inform the future skills and ethical components of
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Matter Mills and London-Lite offices: exploring forms of the onshoring of legal services in an age of globalisation Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Emily Carroll, Steven Vaughan
ABSTRACT This paper explores professional identity formation and the increasing differentiation and fragmentation of the corporate end of the legal profession through a consideration of onshoring, the opening (for the first time) of satellite offices in the UK (but outside of London) by elite law firms. We situate interviews with 25 lawyers, associates and partners, working in onshored UK law firm
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Lawyers, mental illness, admission and misconduct Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Paula Baron, Lillian Corbin
ABSTRACT Since 2004 in Australia, there has been a significant amount of interest in the issues of lawyers and mental illness. As a result there is now a substantial body of literature that examines legal education and its links to lawyer distress. In the profession, there has been a growing awareness of lawyer mental illness and the growth of professional development and lawyer support. Less attention
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Professional associations as regulators: an interview study of the Law Society of New South Wales Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Deborah Hartstein, Justine Rogers
ABSTRACT Professional associations, once the bodies responsible for professional self-regulation, have lost regulatory power. Some have entered into co-regulatory arrangements with state or independent bodies; others have lost power entirely. But although self-regulation has been widely discredited, little research has examined how surviving regulator-associations are adapting to change and, in turn
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Economic corruption, political machinations and legal ethics: correspondents’ report from Canada Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Richard Devlin, Sarah Frame
On 19 October 2015 the Liberal Party of Canada won the general election and Justin Trudeau became Canada’s 23rd prime minister. During both the political campaign and the period after the election, Mr. Trudeau made many promises about ‘doing politics differently’. Two key claims in particular stood out: to make gender equality a key policy principle, and to make reconciliation with Indigenous peoples
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Fighting the good fight? Lessons from the Global South on providing legal aid to refugees in difficult situations Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Jonathan Hew
ABSTRACT This brief report discusses ethical-legal considerations in providing legal aid to refugees internationally. With the help of a case study, it considers the challenges lawyers and other legal aid providers face in assisting clients who are alleged to have committed immoral acts. It highlights how the failure to elevate professional ethics over personal morality in such situations can have
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Learning legal ethics in the law clinics: ‘one hundred thousand housing law’ for offences against minors Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2019-07-03 María L. Torres-Villarreal, Diana R. Bernal-Camargo
ABSTRACT In the process of teaching law, is necessary to address some aspects that are not framed in strictly legal knowledge and require different strategies to be approach by the professor. An example of this, are the cases that a legal clinic knows, where a series of ethical dilemmas are posed to the student and it is important to provide it with the necessary tools to understand the problem from
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Increasing the emphasis on family law lawyering: correspondent’s report from Canada Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Deanne Sowter
Common sense suggests that families ought not to resolve their disputes by increasing the conflict and taking legally defined positions. Family law disputes are riddled with emotional and financial complications and goals, not strictly legal issues. The challenge for lawyers working in this area is to respond to client needs in a cost-effective manner within the system of laws. Responding to that challenge
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Did Joe Groia kill the civility movement? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Alice Woolley
In the first decade of this century Canadian legal regulators and professional organisations claimed a crisis in lawyer civility and pushed for cultural and regulatory change to encourage greater c...
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Computer systems fit for the legal profession? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Sylvie Delacroix
ABSTRACT This essay aims to contribute robust grounds to question the Susskinds’ influential, consequentialist logic when it comes to the legitimacy of automation within the legal profession. It does so by questioning their minimalist understanding of the professions. If it is our commitment to moral equality that is at stake every time lawyers (fail to) hail the specific vulnerability inherent in
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Persuasive legal narrative: articulating ethical standards Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Helena Whalen-Bridge
ABSTRACT When used in legal forums, the persuasive abilities of narrative raise ethical questions. Depending on the jurisdiction, some ethical rules apply to persuasive legal narrative, but these rules establish a minimum standard that does not address how to analyse more nuanced forms of fabrication, such as what kind of inferences can be drawn from evidence to support a narrative. The need to allow
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Governance gone wrong: examining self-regulation of the legal profession Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-07-03 Anita Indira Anand
ABSTRACT England and Australia have abandoned self-regulation of the legal profession, yet Canadian law societies continue to function on this basis. This article argues that the self-regulatory model on which the Law Society of Ontario (the ‘LSO’) operates represents an inadequate form of governance in terms of the accountability it yields. When compared to other organisations, including law societies
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Deferring to the ‘unlearned’ friend: professional ethics and the unrepresented litigant Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-01-02 Rachel Spencer
ABSTRACT Courts are starting to keep data about the numbers of litigants who personally file court documents and appear without counsel. The growth in numbers of unrepresented litigants is aptly described as a phenomenon and can be attributed to various causes. Whether or not it is a ‘problem’ however, is arguable. This article explores the concept of the unrepresented litigant in a strange and unnavigable
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‘He was wearing street clothes, not pyjamas’: common mistakes in lawyers’ assessment of legal capacity for vulnerable older clients Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-01-02 Lise Barry
ABSTRACT Lawyers are increasingly called upon to deal with older clients and have ethical responsibilities to attest to their capacity for legal decision-making. As witnesses to enduring documents, the making of wills and other significant advance planning transactions, lawyers play a role in preventing elder abuse and in upholding the rights of older people. To date however, there has been very little
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Interviewing real clients and the ways it deepens students’ understandings of legal ethics Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-01-02 Anna Cody
ABSTRACT Legal ethics teaching can be enriched and deepened when students experience legal practice through, for example, client interviews. Further, many legal educators are committed to encouraging their students’ commitment to contribute to the community through making the law and legal system fairer. One means of achieving this goal is by introducing a clinical component into a legal ethics course
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Elder abuse and lawyers’ ethical responsibilities: incorporating screening into practice Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-01-02 Nola M. Ries
ABSTRACT Elder abuse is a serious and under-detected problem. Law reform agencies and legal profession regulatory authorities have called for action to ensure that lawyers meet their ethical obligations to older clients, including identifying and acting on risk factors for abuse. Screening tools to detect situations of elder abuse exist, but they are targeted mainly at health and social care practitioners
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Lawyer independence under the spotlight in Australia Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2018-01-02 Suzanne Le Mire
Over the past few months Australia has been transfixed as the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry holds its public hearings.1 Revelations...
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Challenge and change in the Canadian legal profession Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-12-13 Adam Dodek
Lawyers do not ‘do change’ particularly well. Canadian lawyers and the Canadian legal profession are especially averse to change. On this front we in the Canadian legal academy share more in common...
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Technological competence and the duty to safeguard confidential information in the USA Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Benjamin P. Cooper
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Germany: towards a legal profession of specialists? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Matthias Kilian
On 1 January 2018 an omnibus law dealing with issues ranging from construction law to the use of digital seals for the land register will introduce changes to the federal law on the constitution of the courts (Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz). It will establish specialised chambers at the High Courts (Landgerichte) and specialised senates at the Courts of Appeal (Oberlandesgerichte) for a number of areas
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The moral interpretation of law: comparative remarks on Dworkin’s legal principles and Islamic law’s Maqāṣid Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Tareq Moqbel
The study of comparative ethics helps to provide insights into the ethical categories used by scholars of other traditions,1 and shows how ethical theories converge and diverge. This comment presen...
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Collaborative Law: an (un)ethical process for lawyers? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Bobette Wolski
ABSTRACT This article critically examines the practice and ethical underpinnings of Collaborative Law (CL), one of the newest processes in the ADR suite of options available to parties in dispute. CL has been described as mediation without the mediator. The parties and their lawyers agree to negotiate in good faith and in a cooperative non-adversarial manner without the assistance of a mediator. However
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Should lawyers acknowledge whom they represent in public discourse? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Graham Ferris, Nick Johnson
ABSTRACT Political rule depends upon public discourse as it requires negotiation and compromise of conflicting interests. Public discourse includes activities that can be described as cause lawyering, lobbying, and rule entrepreneurship. The rule of law supports public discourse through, inter alia, the right to petition. The right to petition requires identification of those engaged in public discourse
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The unprofessional professional: do lawyers need rules? Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-07-03 Paula Baron, Lillian Corbin
ABSTRACT A lawyer's behaviour derives from their own principles and values, the norms of professionalism, the professional conduct rules and the common law. In the past, much emphasis has been placed upon the first two sources as they formed the basis of self-regulation and influenced the development of legal ethics. Recently, the Australian codes of ethics explicitly detail an increasing range of
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Rebooting the cab rank rule as a limited universal service obligation Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-03-24 Andrew Higgins
ABSTRACT This article critically examines the value and scope of the cab rank rule in England and Australia. Despite the laudable non-discrimination principle underpinning it, the cab rank rule is subject to so many exceptions it is debatable whether the rule has any effect, positive or negative, on access to justice. On the other hand, when the rule is followed, it has the potential to unnecessarily
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Special issue: the ethics of judicial appointments Legal Ethics Pub Date : 2017-01-02 Reid Mortensen, Richard Devlin
This special issue of Legal Ethics focuses on the judiciary, with a particular emphasis on the ethics of judicial appointments. The first four articles all emerge from papers delivered in the two s...