The Legal Profession

Since the publication of its first edition, this textbook has become the definitive student introduction to the subject. As with earlier editions, the seventh edition gives a clear understanding of fundamental legal concepts and their importance within society. In addition, this book addresses the ways in which rules and the structures of law respond to and impact upon changes in economic and political life. The title has been extensively updated and explores recent high profile developments such as the Civil Partnership Act 2005 and the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. This introductory text covers a wide range of topics in a clear, sensible fashion giving full context to each. For this reason An Introduction to Law is ideal for all students of law, be they undergraduate law students, those studying law as part of a mixed degree, or students on social sciences courses which offer law options.

This book is about supervision in the legal profession with a focus on the experience of novice lawyers. It is the first of its kind. Until now there have been a range of books dedicated to professional supervision in many disciplines, but not law. Supervision is an important link between formal university-based legal education and independent practice and is relevant to a range of contemporary legal practice issues including changes driven by technology, workplace culture, regulating law firm management, and well-being. This book aims to be scholarly and practical. It provides an overview of how supervision is positioned in the legal regulatory framework; it describes how supervision is conceived in the legal profession and practice management literature; and draws lessons from clinical legal education and other professional disciplines. By reporting on survey data, this book also provides insights into practitioners’ attitudes and perceptions about supervision in legal practice.

In the aftermath of sixth-century barbarian invasions, the legal profession that had grown and flourished during the Roman Empire vanished. Nonetheless, professional lawyers suddenly reappeared in Western Europe seven hundred years later during the 1230s when church councils and public authorities began to impose a body of ethical obligations on those who practiced law. James Brundage's The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession traces the history of legal practice from its genesis in ancient Rome to its rebirth in the early Middle Ages and eventual resurgence in the courts of the medieval church. By the end of the eleventh century, Brundage argues, renewed interest in Roman law combined with the rise of canon law of the Western church to trigger a series of consolidations in the profession. New legal procedures emerged, and formal training for proctors and advocates became necessary in order to practice law in the reorganized church courts. Brundage demonstrates that many features that characterize legal advocacy today were already in place by 1250, as lawyers trained in Roman and canon law became professionals in every sense of the term. A sweeping examination of the centuries-long power struggle between local courts and the Christian church, secular rule and religious edict, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession will be a resource for the professional and the student alike.

Throughout history, the American legal profession has tried to hold tight to its identity by retreating into its traditional values and structure during times of self-perceived crisis. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. Author James E. Moliterno, consistently argues that the profession has resisted societal change and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. In response to every crisis, lawyers asked: "How can we stay even more 'the same' than we already are?" The legal profession has been an unwilling, capitulating entity to any transformation wrought by the overwhelming tide of change. Only when the shifts in society, culture, technology, economics, and globalization could no longer be denied did the legal profession make any proactive changes that would preserve status quo. This book demonstrates how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history: Watergate, communist infiltration, waves of immigration, the explosion of litigation, and the current economic crisis that blends with dramatic changes in technology, communications, and globalization. Ultimately, Moliterno urges the profession to look outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes and connections with these periodic crises. Doing so would allow the profession to grow with the society, solve problems with, rather than against, the flow of society, and be more attuned to the very society the profession claims to serve. This paperback version includes a commentary on the prevailing crisis in legal education.

In countries outside the developed world, although writers have written commentaries on specific legal codes, very little attention has been given to legal writing which has focused specifically on the ethics of the legal profession. This book makes a special contribution in that regard providing, as it does, a comparative study of prevailing efforts to enhance ethical standards in a profession potentially in crisis and under much public scrutiny. Countries which have been examined include the UK, the US, Canada, South Africa, and countries in the Pacific, South East Asia and the Caribbean. Valuable guidance and learning are provided on such topical issues as wasted costs orders, conflicts of interests, legal and judicial codes, confidentiality, privilege and the ethics of the criminal process, where the jury system comes in for critical evaluation. This book will be a valuable text on the ethics and status of the profession. It will be of considerable interest to law students, practitioners and legal academics, Bar Associations, Attorneys-General and Directors of Public Prosecutions as well as members of the judiciary.

Contains articles that explore confrontations in the daily practice of law, employing case studies. This text is divided into 6 sections, each dealing with an important issue: the Structure of the Profession; the Moral Critique of Professionalism; the Adversary System; Conflict of Interest; Client Confidences; and, the Provision of Legal Services.

With clear and concise explanations of all basic concepts in the law of lawyering and all topics tested on the MPRE, this accessible book allows professors to satisfy the ABA professional responsibility requirement with a course that students find highly engaging and useful. Unlike most professional responsibility textbooks on the market, however, it links ethics issues to portraits of the practice contexts in which they typically arise for real lawyers, helping students appreciate their relevance in contemporary practice. It also introduces students to the rich empirical literature on the profession, teaching them about the profession's overall composition and organization as well as huge variation in the practice settings, types of work, and daily experiences of American lawyers and their clients. It describes powerful economic and cultural forces that are reshaping the legal profession, and it explores current controversies relating to access to justice, globalization, technology, diversity, and legal education. It invites students to reflect on their place in the profession and how they will navigate the turbulent landscape to chart successful, rewarding and responsible careers in almost any type of practice today's law graduates might enter. Most chapters also contain problems that can be used in class discussion or as written exercises. The Second Edition is updated to include problems, materials, and questions drawn from recent events highlighting professional ethics issues currently in the news. It also presents the most recent scholarship and commentary on new challenges for the legal profession posed by technology, litigation finance, and globalization. This is the only PR book on the market that provides sufficient explanation of basic legal concepts and the operation of the legal system to make it suitable for first-year students, but it also works very well for second and third year courses.