Lawyers In Practice

How do lawyers resolve ethical dilemmas in the everyday context of their practice? What are the issues that commonly arise, and how do lawyers determine the best ways to resolve them? Until recently, efforts to answer these questions have focused primarily on rules and legal doctrine rather than the real-life situations lawyers face in legal practice. The first book to present empirical research on ethical decision making in a variety of practice contexts, including corporate litigation, securities, immigration, and divorce law, Lawyers in Practice fills a substantial gap in the existing literature. Following an introduction emphasizing the increasing importance of understanding context in the legal profession, contributions focus on ethical dilemmas ranging from relatively narrow ethical issues to broader problems of professionalism, including the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose evidence, the management of conflicts of interest, and loyalty to clients and the court. Each chapter details the resolution of a dilemma from the practitioner’s point of view that is, in turn, set within a particular community of practice. Timely and practical, this book should be required reading for law students as well as students and scholars of law and society.

Offering invaluable guidance on the key skills required on the LPC, Lawyers' Skills also features a number of tasks, examples and reflective exercises specifically designed to support students in developing, practicing and refining the legal skills which are integral to the modern solicitors' practice.

This innovative case file provides materials for students to work in the role of attorney as they learn and master the primary skills needed for legal practice. The file is equally suitable for first-year legal practice/legal writing classes or upper-level simulation courses focused on interviewing, counseling, negotiation or pre-trial litigation. Student-attorneys represent clients on both sides of a lawsuit through a realistic and carefully-sequenced series of exercises that track the stages of pre-trial work while encouraging mastery of many basic skills of legal practice: research, formal and informal legal writing, interviewing and counseling clients, fact development, discovery, motion practice, negotiation and drafting. Every chapter of the case file is scaffolded on students' earlier work and critical reflection, permitting students to develop a confident sense of professional identity as they see the results of their efforts play out as the case develops. Chapters feature lively commentary giving an overview of the assigned task and contextualizing it within the goals for the case. The materials are accompanied by a comprehensive Teacher's Manual that includes suggestions for teaching and using the case file, detailed instructions for clients, and additional documents available only to counsel for each side. This book is part of the Context and Practice Series, edited by Michael Hunter Schwartz, Professor of Law and Dean of the McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific.

Should a lawyer keep a client's secret even when disclosure would exculpate a person wrongly accused of crime? The Practice of Justice is a fresh look at this and other traditional questions about the ethics of lawyering.

How do lawyers think about and make the important decisions that constitute the day-to-day practice of law? This book explores that question through an extensive empirical study of lawyers practicing divorce law in New England. The authors emphasize the importance of "collegial control" in shaping lawyers' decisions and identify a variety of "communities of practice" that serve as key agents of that control. Offering a new understanding of the nature of lawyers' work in divorce law as well as a new perspective on legal professionalism, this book is required reading for scholars, students, and practitioners.

This book focuses on what and how to teach students about being a lawyer as they take responsibility for clients in a clinical course. The book identifies learning and lawyering theories as well as practical approaches to planning and teaching; it highlights how the four clinical methodologies-seminar, rounds, supervision, and fieldwork-reinforce and complement each other. The book illustrates clinical education's transformative potential to create ethical, skilled, thoughtful practitioners imbued with professional values of justice and service. With contributions by both seasoned and newer clinical educators, the book addresses issues faced by all who teach in experiential lawyering courses.