Lives of Lawyers


Book Description

A rare glimpse at the real-life workings of five legal organizations and how they are daily redefining the contemporary "law of lawyering"




Lives of Lawyers Revisited


Book Description

The past two decades have seen profound changes in the legal profession. Lives of Lawyers Revisited extends Michael Kelly’s work in the original Lives of Lawyers, offering unique insights into the nature of these changes, examined through stories of five extraordinarily varied law practices. By placing the spotlight on organizations as phenomena that generate their own logic and tensions, Lives of Lawyers Revisited speaks to the experience of many lawyers and anticipates important issues on the professional horizon. "Michael Kelly has done it again! His Lives of Lawyers Revisited is a very easy read about some very difficult notions like 'litigation blindness' and law as a business. It presents some fascinating perspectives on our profession." —J. Michael McWilliams, Past President, American Bar Association "The best single book about the American realities and possibilities of the American legal profession, combining an empathic and insightful account of law practice with a penetrating analysis of the wider context of professional work." —Marc Galanter, University of Wisconsin "Michael Kelly believes that professional values and conduct are not realized in codes, but in the experiences of practice, and that practice draws its routines and ideals from organizations. Through his studies of lawyers in various firms, closely observed and sympathetically described, Kelly reveals how differently organizations adapt to the intense pressures of today's practice environment. His method of linking individual life-experiences to organizational strategies and the external constraints of competition and client demands infuses realism and richness into the concept of professionalism and makes this one of the most interesting and original books on professions and professionalism to appear in years." —Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School "In his two volumes of Lives of Lawyers, Michael Kelly explores legal ethics in an unusual, and unusually rewarding, way. Rather than focusing on rules or arguments, Kelly looks at the kind of lives lawyers lead. Ethics, Socrates thought, is about how to live one's life, and Kelly takes the Socratic question to heart. He explores the institutions lawyers work in and the choices they make. He writes with intelligence, great insight, and above all with heart. This is a superb book." —David Luban, Georgetown University Michael J. Kelly is President and Chairman of the Board of the National Senior Citizens Law Center, an advocacy group for older Americans of limited means.




Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America


Book Description

How to restore the can-do spirit that made America great, from the author of the best-selling The Death of Common Sense. Americans are losing the freedom to make sense of daily choices—teachers can’t maintain order in the classroom, managers are trained to avoid candor, schools ban tag, and companies plaster inane warnings on everything: “Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller.” Philip K. Howard’s urgent argument is full of examples, often darkly humorous. He describes the historical and cultural forces that led to this mess and lays out the basic shift in approach needed to fix it. Today we are flooded with legal threats that prevent us from taking responsibility. We must rebuild boundaries of law that protect an open field of freedom. The voices here will ring true to every reader. The analysis is powerful, and the solution unavoidable. What’s at stake, Howard explains in this seminal book, is the vitality of American culture.




Private Lawyers and the Public Interest


Book Description

This collection of original essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field examines the history, conditions, organization, and strategies of pro bono lawyering. Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession traces the rise and impact of the American Bar Association's campaign to hold lawyers accountable for a commitment to public service and to encourage public service within law schools. Combining empirical legal research with reflections by practitioners and theorists about the meaning and practice of pro bono legal work, this collection of essays interrogates the public service ideals that are inscribed within the legal profession and places these ideals within a broader social, economic, ideological, and normative context. Particular attention is paid to the factors that explain why lawyers engage in pro bono work and the ways in which their views of pro bono are mediated by the institutional context of their legal practice. The book also explores the concept of "public" in public service and compares pro bono as a means of delivering legal services with other mechanisms such as state funding. Collectively, these essays investigate the evolving role of pro bono in the legal profession and in law schools, the relationship between pro bono ideals and pro bono in practice, the way that pro bono is shaped by external forces beyond the individual practitioner, and the multi-faceted nature of legal professionalism as expressed through pro bono practice.




Parker and Evans's Inside Lawyers' Ethics


Book Description

Parker and Evans's Inside Lawyers' Ethics provides a practical and engaging introduction to ethical decision-making in legal practice in Australia. Underpinned by four theoretical concepts – adversarial advocacy, responsible lawyering, moral activism and ethics of care – this text analyses legal and professional frameworks, highlighting relevant parts of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules. Case studies and discussion questions offer contemporary, practical examples of the application of ethics. The book also addresses the challenge of ethical action and offers techniques to deal with ethical conflicts.This edition has been comprehensively updated and discusses the implications of advances in legal technology, mental ill-health in the profession and the complexities of government legal practice. A new chapter covers lawyers' ethical obligation to address the legal challenges posed by climate change. Written by an expert author team, Parker and Evans's Inside Lawyers' Ethics empowers readers to identify ethical challenges and resolve them through good decision-making practices.




The Crown of a Life


Book Description




Lawyers as Leaders


Book Description

No occupation in America supplies a greater proportion of leaders than the legal profession, yet it has done little to prepare them for this role. Lawyers sit at the helm of a vast array of powerful law firms, businesses, governmental, and nonprofit organizations. Two of the last three presidents have been lawyers. And yet almost no occupation rouses greater public distrust. This paradox raises two important questions: Why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so ill-prepared for that role? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but provides an invaluable overview for attorneys who occupy or aspire to leadership positions in public and private practice settings. Drawing on a broad range of interdisciplinary research, biographical profiles, and empirical studies, she covers everything from decision making, conflict management, and communication to ethics and diversity in leadership, and what lawyers can do to advance both their professional development and the public interest. Rhode contends that the legal profession attracts many people with the ambition and analytic capabilities to be leaders but often fails to develop other qualities that are essential to their effectiveness. Successful lawyers need to be confident, competitive, and even combative, but possessing such qualities often results in a lack of interpersonal sensitivity, emotional intelligence, and resilience-the "soft skills" that both legal education and the reward structure of legal practice consistently undervalue. The most successful leaders, Rhode argues, are those who can see past their own ambitions and retain a capacity for critical reflection on their performance. The first serious work on leadership and law, Lawyers as Leaders will prove essential to law students, law faculty, and lawyers holding or seeking governance positions.




Women Lawyers


Book Description

A must-read for every woman in the midst of—or contemplating—a career in law, and for the men who work with them. The very presence of women in law—normal as it may seem to us today—signals revolutionary change in a social order that for centuries entrusted control over its rules to men. Mona Harrington examines both the problems women meet when they claim equal authority as rule makers and the impact of new perspectives and issues that women bring with them into the profession. On the basis of more than one hundred interviews with women lawyers, judges, and law school professors and students, and through the stories of their daily experiences, Harrington pinpoints and analyzes the key factors holding women back in a profession still dominated by males—among them the “men’s club” ambience, the focus on billable hours, sexual harassment and the inequality it perpetuates, lingering unequal division of labor at home, and hostile media images of women in positions of power. She shows us what life is like for women lawyers in practice today and how their dilemmas reflect the social issues of our time. She gives us the voices of women who have adapted to the cultural codes of corporate law and women who have broken them; women who have successfully balanced their professional and private lives and women who feel trapped by the combination of long hours at the office and full responsibility at home. She introduces us to women in new and alternative firms, on the faculties of small public law schools, in in-house legal departments, and in prosecutors’ offices and courtrooms—women who are devising new rules and legal theories to bring about change.







Lawyers in Your Living Room!


Book Description

From Perry Mason and The Defenders in the 1960s to L.A. Law in the 80s, The Practice and Ally McBeal in the 90s, to Boston Legal, Shark and Law & Order today, the television industry has generated an endless stream of dramatic series involving law and lawyers. This new guide examines television series from the past and present, domestic and foreign, that are devoted to the law.