Synopses & Reviews
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 prosecutorand#8217;s obligation to disclose evidence, the management of conflicts of interest, and loyalty to clientsand#160;and the court. Each chapter details the resolution of a dilemma from the practitionerand#8217;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.
Review
and#8220;With
Lawyers in Practice, Leslie C. Levin and Lynn Mather break new ground. This is the first book to locate the ethical and unethical behavior of lawyers in details of their many varied practice contexts; the contributors make a convincing case that we can
only understand lawyersand#8217; behavior contextually. Very thorough, illuminating, and persuasive.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This outstanding collection of essays on the actualities of legal practice in a variety of contexts is an important complementand#8212;and in many ways a correctiveand#8212;to the perception of the bar as sufficiently undifferentiated to make a single and#8220;Code of Responsibilityand#8221; a truly sensible enterprise. I think this will be of great interest to any scholar in the field precisely because it fleshes out, with vivid concrete examples and interviews, the implications of the fact that the bar is highly fragmented.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;This very interesting edited volume is one of the first books to examine lawyersandrsquo; ethical decision making in a variety of practice settings and through empirical research. I know of very few collections that examine so many different types of lawyer practice. This volume will become a very important contribution to the literature in this field of study.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;An ambitious and important book that seeks to move the study of lawyers' ethics from the realm of theory to an appreciation of the empirical world of decision making. Highly recommended.andquot;
Review
"
Lawyers in Practice is an excellent and important addition to the existing resources on the ethical conduct of lawyers. It offers nuanced and textured analyses of lawyers' decisionmaking with regard to issues of ethics and professional identity, using the lens of the contexts in which lawyers practice to frame the discussion. The work is supported by both qualitative and quantitative empirical research that provides richly detailed and convincing backdrops for examining ethical conduct."
About the Author
Leslie C. Levin is professor of law at the University of Connecticut School of Law.
Lynn Mather is professor of law and political science at the University at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York. She is coeditor of the Chicago Series in Law and Society and coauthor of several books, including Private Lawyers and the Public Interest.
Table of Contents
Preface
Contributors
Part I. Introductory Perspectives on Ethics in Context
Chapter 1 and#160;Why Context Matters
Lynn Mather and Leslie C. Levin
Chapter 2and#160;Some Realism about Legal Realism for Lawyers: Assessing the Role of Context in Legal Ethics
David B. Wilkins
Chapter 3and#160;Whose Ethics? The Benchmark Problem in Legal Ethics Research
Elizabeth Chambliss
Part II. Decision Making in Communities of Legal Practice
Family and Immigration
Chapter 4and#160;Client Grievances and Lawyer Conduct: The Challenges of Divorce Practice
Lynn Mather and Craig A. McEwen
Chapter 5and#160;Immigration Lawyers and the Lying Client
Leslie C. Levin
Personal Injury
Chapter 6 and#160;Plaintiffsand#8217; Lawyers and the Tension between Professional Norms and the Need to Generate Business
Stephen Daniels and Joanne Martin
Chapter 7and#160;Betwixt and Between: The Ethical Dilemmas of Insurance Defense
Herbert M. Kritzer
Corporate Settings
Chapter 8and#160;The Ethics of Constructing Truth: The Corporate Litigatorand#8217;s Approach
Kimberly Kirkland
Chapter 9and#160; and#160;Transnational Lawyering: Clients, Ethics, and Regulation
John Flood
Chapter 10 and#160;The Ethics of In-House Practice
Sung Hui Kim
Corporate Specialties
Chapter 11and#160;The Ethical Lives of Securities Lawyers
Patrick Schmidt
Chapter 12and#160;Scientists at the Bar: The Professional World of Patent Lawyersand#160;
John M. Conley and Lynn Mather
Criminal Law
and#160;
Chapter 13and#160;Prosecutorsand#8217; Ethics in Context: Influences on Prosecutorial Disclosure
Ellen Yaroshefsky and Bruce A. Green
Chapter 14 and#160;Reinterpreting the Zealous Advocate: Multiple Intermediary Roles of the Criminal Defense Attorney
Nicole Martorano Van Cleve
Public Interest Lawyers
Chapter 15 and#160;Legal Services Lawyers:and#160; When Conceptions of Lawyering and Values Clash
Corey S. Shdaimah
Chapter 16and#160;The Accountability Problem in Public Interest Practice: Old Paradigms and New Directions
Scott L. Cummings
Epilogue
Index