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Books > Law > Jurisprudence & general issues > Legal profession > General
We live in an era of economic austerity and political uncertainty. This has profound implications for all areas of publicly funded services; the justice system is no exception. During such times, the judiciary must remain steadfast in maintaining their independence irrespective of any funding model. Professor Hardy and Sir Ryder set out a vision for the Justice system that takes a strategic approach to the legal system, explicitly based on national self-interest and commercial effectiveness. They argue that, in striving for such a strategic approach to the justice system, there should not be separate access to justice and business reliance on the Rule of Law, as if they are separate worlds. The authors advocate an approach enabling access to justice to be efficient as well as effective, evidence based and founded on solid analysis of needs and capabilities. This new strategic approach would therefore be to ensure that the Judiciary, as 'one judiciary' is equipped and skilled as proficiently as it possible and as aligned and as effective in its leadership. The authors bring unique expertise to the pursuit of 'one judiciary', carefully and thoroughly analysing how such a system would work in theory and in practice. This revolutionary monograph promises to be a defining text in the field of judicial leadership. It is essential reading for all Judicial Office Holders, legal policy makers, legal practitioners and academics, and for all those with an interest in human resources, business and management, psychology, and law.
By any measure, the law as a profession is in serious trouble. Americans' trust in lawyers is at a low, and many members of the profession wish they had chosen a different path. Law schools, with their endlessly rising tuitions, are churning out too many graduates for the jobs available. Yet despite the glut of lawyers, the United States ranks 67th (tied with Uganda) of 97 countries in access to justice and affordability of legal services. The upper echelons of the legal establishment remain heavily white and male. Most problematic of all, the professional organizations that could help remedy these concerns instead jealously protect their prerogatives, stifling necessary innovation and failing to hold practitioners accountable. In light of these circumstances, it is unsurprising that law ranked the lowest of ten occupations in a 2013 Pew survey of which profession or occupation contributes the most to society's well being. Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the legal profession's almost entirely reactive response to claims of misconduct-all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public. A clear and pointed account of a profession that has gone badly off the rails, The Trouble with Lawyers is both an essential guide to America's legal crisis and a tool that can help fix it.
International law is not merely a set of rules or processes, but is a professional activity practised by a diversity of figures, including scholars, judges, counsel, teachers, legal advisers and activists. Individuals may, in different contexts, play more than one of these roles, and the interactions between them are illuminating of the nature of international law itself. This collection of innovative, multidisciplinary and self-reflective essays reveals a bilateral process whereby, on the one hand, the professionalisation of international law informs discourses about the law, and, on the other hand, discourses about the law inform the professionalisation of the discipline. Intended to promote a dialogue between practice and scholarship, this book is a must-read for all those engaged in the profession of international law.
Flint, Michigan's water crisis, the New Jersey "Bridgegate" scandal, Enron: all these incidents are examples of various forms of leadership failure. More specifically, each represents marked failures among leaders with legal training. When we look closer at one profession from which we often draw our political, business, and organizational leaders—the legal profession—we find a deep chasm between what law schools teach and what the world expects. Legal education ignores leadership, sending the next generation of legally-minded leaders into a dynamic world dangerously unprepared. Dangerous Leaders exposes the risks and results of leaving lawyers unprepared to lead. It provides law schools, law students, and the legal profession with the leadership tools and models to build a better foundation of leadership acumen. Anthony C. Thompson draws from his twenty years of experience in global executive education for Fortune 100 companies and his experience as a law professor to chart a path forward for better leadership instruction within the legal academy. Using vivid, real-life case studies, Thompson explores catastrophic political, business, and legal failures that have occurred precisely because of a lapse in leadership from those with legal training. He maintains that these practices are chronic leadership failures that could have been avoided. In examining these patterns of failures, it becomes apparent that legal education has fundamentally misread its task. Thompson proposes a fundamental rethinking of legal education, based upon intersectional leadership, to prepare lawyers to assume the types of roles that our increasingly fast-paced world requires. Intersectional leadership challenges lawyer leaders to see the world through a different lens and expects a form of inclusion and respect for other perspectives and experiences that will prove critical to maneuvering in a complex environment. Dangerous Leaders imparts invaluable tools and lessons to best equip current and future generations of legal leaders.
Expressions of support for diversity are nearly ubiquitous among contemporary law firms and corporations. Organizations back these rhetorical commitments with dedicated diversity staff and various diversity and inclusion initiatives. Yet, the goal of proportionate representation for people of color and women remains unrealized. Members of historically underrepresented groups remain seriously disadvantaged in professional training and work environments that white, upper-class men continue to dominate. While many professional labor markets manifest patterns of demographic inequality, these patterns are particularly pronounced in the law and elite segments of many professions. Diversity in Practice analyzes the disconnect between expressed commitments to diversity and practical achievements, revealing the often obscure systemic causes that drive persistent professional inequalities. These original contributions build on existing literature and forge new paths in explaining enduring patterns of stratification in professional careers. These more realistic assessments provide opportunities to move beyond mere rhetoric to something approaching diversity in practice.
Virtually all American judges are former lawyers. This book argues that these lawyer-judges instinctively favor the legal profession in their decisions and that this bias has far-reaching and deleterious effects on American law. There are many reasons for this bias, some obvious and some subtle. Fundamentally, it occurs because - regardless of political affiliation, race, or gender - every American judge shares a single characteristic: a career as a lawyer. This shared background results in the lawyer-judge bias. The book begins with a theoretical explanation of why judges naturally favor the interests of the legal profession and follows with case law examples from diverse areas, including legal ethics, criminal procedure, constitutional law, torts, evidence, and the business of law. The book closes with a case study of the Enron fiasco, an argument that the lawyer-judge bias has contributed to the overweening complexity of American law, and suggests some possible solutions.
An engaging history of women's rights and the legal profession in the nineteenth century Long before Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg earned their positions on the Supreme Court, they were preceded in their goal of legal excellence by several intrepid trailblazers. In Rebels at the Bar, prize-winning legal historian Jill Norgren recounts the life stories of a small group of nineteenth century women who were among the first female attorneys in the United States. Beginning in the late 1860s, these determined rebels pursued the radical ambition of entering the then all-male profession of law. They were motivated by a love of learning. They believed in fair play and equal opportunity. They desired recognition as professionals and the ability to earn a good living. Through a biographical approach, Norgren presents the common struggles of eight women first to train and to qualify as attorneys, then to practice their hard-won professional privilege. Their story is one of nerve, frustration, and courage. This first generation practiced civil and criminal law, solo and in partnership. The women wrote extensively and lobbied on the major issues of the day, but the professional opportunities open to them had limits. They never had the opportunity to wear the black robes of a judge. They were refused entry into the lucrative practices of corporate and railroad law. Although male lawyers filled legislatures and the Foreign Service, presidents refused to appoint these early women lawyers to diplomatic offices and the public refused to elect them to legislatures. Rebels at the Bar expands our understanding of both women's rights and the history of the legal profession in the nineteenth century. It focuses on the female renegades who trained in law and then, like men, fought considerable odds to create successful professional lives. In this engaging and beautifully written book, Norgren shares her subjects' faith in the art of the possible. In so doing, she ensures their place in history.
During the coming decades, the digital revolution that has transformed so much of our world will transform legal education as well. The digital production and distribution of course materials will powerfully affect both the content and the way materials are used in the classroom and library. This collection of essays by leading legal scholars in various fields explores three aspects of this coming transformation. The first set of essays discusses the way digital materials will be created and how they will change concepts of authorship as well as methods of production and distribution. The second set explores the impact of digital materials on law school classrooms and law libraries, and the third set considers the potential transformation of the curriculum that the materials are likely to produce. Taken together, these essays provide a guide to momentous changes that every legal teacher and scholar needs to understand.
Enabling information interoperability, fostering legal knowledge usability and reuse, enhancing legal information search, in short, formalizing the complexity of legal knowledge to enhance legal knowledge management are challenging tasks, for which different solutions and lines of research have been proposed. During the last decade, research and applications based on the use of legal ontologies as a technique to represent legal knowledge has raised a very interesting debate about their capacity and limitations to represent conceptual structures in the legal domain. Making conceptual legal knowledge explicit would support the development of a web of legal knowledge, improve communication, create trust and enable and support open data, e-government and e-democracy activities. Moreover, this explicit knowledge is also relevant to the formalization of software agents and the shaping of virtual institutions and multi-agent systems or environments. This book explores the use of ontologism in legal knowledge
representation for semantically-enhanced legal knowledge systems or
web-based applications. In it, current methodologies, tools and
languages used for ontology development are revised, and the book
includes an exhaustive revision of existing ontologies in the legal
domain. The development of the Ontology of Professional Judicial
Knowledge (OPJK) is presented as a case study.
The Holistic Lawyer shows legal professionals that there is a way to keep up their standards without getting overwhelmed. Ritu Goswamy, lawyer and productivity consultant, builds on her successful New Billable Hour (TM) program in The Holistic Lawyer where she reveals tools to level up legal professionals' practice even more, using one of their biggest resources: their own brain. The Holistic Lawyer teaches readers how to move from overwhelm to efficiency and reach maximum success in their professional and personal life. Within its pages, Ritu teaches legal professionals: Why lawyers overwork...and how to stop How they can use their brain instead of letting it use them Why working hard to prove competence is counterproductive How increasing their emotional intelligence makes them more ethical What steps to take to work more efficiently The legal profession is changing rapidly. It's time for lawyers to work smarter not harder, and Ritu is going to show them how.
Between 2000 and 2015, women ascended to the top of judiciaries across Africa, most notably as chief justices of supreme courts in common law countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Malawi, Lesotho and Zambia, but also as presidents of constitutional courts in civil law countries such as Benin, Burundi, Gabon, Niger and Senegal. Most of these appointments was a "first" in terms of the gender of the chief justice. At the same time, women are being appointed in record numbers as magistrates, judges and justices across the continent. While women's increasing numbers and roles in African executives and legislatures have been addressed in a burgeoning scholarly literature, very little work has focused on women in judiciaries. This book addresses the important issue of the increasing numbers and varied roles of women judges and justices, as judiciaries evolve across the continent. Scholars of law, gender politics and African politics provide overviews of recent developments in gender and the judiciary in nine African countries that represent north, east, southern and west Africa as well as a range of colonial experiences, postcolonial trajectories and legal systems, including mixes of common, civil, customary, or sharia law. In the process, each chapter seeks to address the following questions: What has been the historical experience of the judicial system in a given country, from before colonialism until the present? What is the current court structure and where are the women judges, justices, magistrates and other women located? What are the selection or appointment processes for joining the bench and in what ways may these help or hinder women to gain access to the courts as judges and justices? Once they become judges, do women on the bench promote the rights of women through their judicial powers? What are the challenges and obstacles facing women judges and justices in Africa? Timely and relevant in this era in which governmental accountability and transparency are essential to the consolidation of democracy in Africa and when women are accessing significant leadership positions across the continent, this book considers the substantive and symbolic representation of women's interests by women judges and the wider implications of their presence for changing institutional norms and advancing the rule of law and human rights.
Becoming a lawyer is about much more than acquiring knowledge and technique. As law students learn the law and acquire some basic skills, they are also inevitably forming a deep sense of themselves in their new roles as lawyers. That sense of self - the student's nascent professional identity - needs to take a particular form if the students are to fulfil the public purposes of lawyers and find deep meaning and satisfaction in their work. In this book, Professors Patrick Longan, Daisy Floyd, and Timothy Floyd combine what they have learned in many years of teaching and research concerning the lawyer's professional identity with lessons derived from legal ethics, moral psychology, and moral philosophy. They describe in depth the six virtues that every lawyer needs as part of his or her professional identity, and they explore both the obstacles to acquiring and deploying those virtues and strategies for overcoming those impediments. The result is a straightforward guide for law students on how to cultivate a professional identity that will allow them to make a meaningful difference in the lives of others and to flourish as individuals.
This book is about the role of lawyers in constructing a just society. Its central objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between lawyers' commercial aims and public aspirations. Drawing on interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives, it explores whether lawyers can transcend self-interest to meaningfully contribute to systems of political accountability, ethical advocacy and distributional fairness. Its contributors, some of the world's leading scholars of the legal profession, offer evidence that although justice is possible, it is never complete. Ultimately, how much - and what type of - justice prevails depends on how lawyers respond to, and reshape, the political and economic conditions in which they practise. As the essays demonstrate, the possibility of justice is diminished as lawyers pursue self-regulation in the service of power; it is enhanced when lawyers mobilize - in the political arena, workplace and law school - to contest it.
This book is about the role of lawyers in constructing a just society. Its central objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between lawyers' commercial aims and public aspirations. Drawing on interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives, it explores whether lawyers can transcend self-interest to meaningfully contribute to systems of political accountability, ethical advocacy and distributional fairness. Its contributors, some of the world's leading scholars of the legal profession, offer evidence that although justice is possible, it is never complete. Ultimately, how much - and what type of - justice prevails depends on how lawyers respond to, and reshape, the political and economic conditions in which they practise. As the essays demonstrate, the possibility of justice is diminished as lawyers pursue self-regulation in the service of power; it is enhanced when lawyers mobilize - in the political arena, workplace and law school - to contest it.
The fundamental thesis of Constitutional Law as Fiction is that in writing the opinion that explains a judgment, a judge not only analyzes and organizes precedent and makes and defends policy or value judgments, but he or she also tells a story, much as a historian does. Like a history, this story has the appearance of simple truth, but, in fact, of necessity, it is a "fiction" as well--not in the sense of a lie or fairy tale, but in the sense of a constructed meaning. Strangely enough, these fictions persuade those who read them and those who write them, and without this persuasion, the law would lose much of its authority. L. H. LaRue examines several critical Supreme Court cases, including Everson v. Board of Education and Marbury v. Madison, and specifically examines the rhetorical techniques of Chief Justice John Marshall. In analyzing the construction of meaning in the rhetoric of the law, LaRue ultimately contends that judges must not abandon the "fictions" in their judgments; they must strive to improve them.
All individuals face stress in their daily lives, but this is often particularly true for those who enforce the law, administer justice, or are forced into the legal system. Uncontrolled strain can result in negative behaviors, burnout, risk-taking, and physical and psychological symptoms ranging from colds to depression and suicide. This, in turn, can have a dramatic impact on the functioning of the legal system as a whole. On the other hand, contact with the legal system has the potential to promote wellbeing for many individuals, such as victims who feel that justice has been served and jurors and judges who feel they have helped preserve the integrity of the legal system. Stress, Trauma, and Wellbeing in the Legal System presents theory, research, and scholarship from a variety of social scientific disciplines and offers suggestions for those interested in exploring and improving the wellbeing of those who are voluntarily (police, probation officers, civil plaintiffs, lawyers, judges, court staff) or involuntarily (jurors, criminal defendants, witnesses, children, the elderly) drawn into the legal system. This comprehensive volume is an invaluable resource for those intersested in protecting the wellbeing of individuals in the legal system, particularly criminal justice professionals, judges, attorneys, forensic psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, researchers in psychology, criminology, and sociology, and students in each of these areas.
European Law sets out the doctrines, principles and case law of the main areas of EU law, and where appropriate explores how they interact with national legal principles and tenets. This fifth edition has been fully revised to include recent developments in the area. Taking into account the far-reaching changes made to European law by the Treaty of Lisbon, it covers all important new cases and legislation whilst developing existing topics. Treatment is given to a number of new regulations on jurisdiction and choice of law and a large number of recent decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the Court of First Instance across a range of European law issues. The analysis of cases is complemented by the use of specimen forms and precedents as examples of documentation students will come across in practice. Although primarily aimed at apprentices studying on the Professional Practice Courses, the manual will also be of great interest to those who find that EU law touches upon their practice, whether in the public or private sector. Online Resource Centre Changes and developments in the area will be covered by regular updates to the Online Resource Centre.
Haben grew up spending summers with her family in the enchanting Eritrean city of Asmara. There, she discovered courage as she faced off against a bull she couldn't see, and found in herself an abiding strength as she absorbed her parents' harrowing experiences during Eritrea's thirty-year war with Ethiopia. Their refugee story inspired her to embark on a quest for knowledge, traveling the world in search of the secret to belonging. She explored numerous fascinating places, including Mali, where she helped build a school under the scorching Saharan sun. Her many adventures over the years range from the hair-raising to the hilarious. Haben defines disability as an opportunity for innovation. She learned non-visual techniques for everything from dancing salsa to handling an electric saw. She developed a text-to-braille communication system that created an exciting new way to connect with people. Haben pioneered her way through obstacles, graduated from Harvard Law, and now uses her talents to advocate for people with disabilities. HABEN takes readers through a thrilling game of blind hide-and-seek in Louisiana, a treacherous climb up an iceberg in Alaska, and a magical moment with President Obama at The White House. Warm, funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, this captivating memoir is a testament to one woman's determination to find the keys to connection.
Experience the multimedia and view the links featured in the book at lawondisplay.com Visual and multimedia digital technologies are transforming the practice of law: how lawyers construct and argue their cases, present evidence to juries, and communicate with each other. They are also changing how law is disseminated throughout and used by the general public. What are these technologies, how are they used and perceived in the courtroom and in wider culture, and how do they affect legal decision making? In this comprehensive survey and analysis of how new visual technologies are transforming both the practice and culture of American law, Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel explain how, when, and why legal practice moved from a largely words-only environment to one more dependent on and driven by images, and how rapidly developing technologies have further accelerated this change. They discuss older visual technologies, such as videotape evidence, and then current and future uses of visual and multimedia digital technologies, including trial presentation software and interactive multimedia. They also describe how law itself is going online, in the form of virtual courts, cyberjuries, and more, and explore the implications of law's movement to computer screens. Throughout Law on Display, the authors illustrate their analysis with examples from a wide range of actual trials.
While many young people become lawyers for the big bucks, others are motivated by the pursuit of social justice, seeking to help people for whom legal services are financially, socially, or politically inaccessible. These progressive lawyers often bring a considerable degree of idealism to their work, and many leave the field due to insurmountable red tape and spiraling disillusionment. But what about those who stay? And what do their clients think? Negotiating Justice explores how progressive lawyers and their clients negotiate the dissonance between personal idealism and the realities of a system that doesn't often champion the rights of the poor. Corey S. Shdaimah draws on over fifty interviews with urban legal service lawyers and their clients to provide readers with a compelling behind-the-scenes look at how different notions of practice can present significant barriers for both clients and lawyers working with limited resources, often within a legal system that many view as fundamentally unequal or hostile. Through consideration of the central themes of progressive lawyering--autonomy, collaboration, transformation, and social change--Shdaimah presents a subtle and complex tableau of the concessions both lawyers and clients often have to make as they navigate the murky and resistant terrains of the legal system and their wider pursuits of justice and power.
The stories of Guantanamo detainees, silenced and imprisoned without trial, as told by their lawyers Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the United States imprisoned more than seven hundred and fifty men at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These men, ranging from teenage boys to men in their eighties from over forty different countries, were detained for years without charges, trial, and a fair hearing. Without any legal status or protection, they were truly outside the law: imprisoned in secret, denied communication with their families, and subjected to extreme isolation, physical and mental abuse, and, in some instances, torture. These are the detainees' stories, told by their lawyers because the prisoners themselves were silenced. It took habeas counsel more than two years-and a ruling from the United States Supreme Court-to finally gain the right to visit and talk to their clients at Guantanamo. Even then, lawyers were forced to operate under severe restrictions designed to inhibit communication and envelop the prison in secrecy. In time, however, lawyers were able to meet with their clients and bring the truth about Guantanamo to the world. The Guantanamo Lawyers contains over one hundred personal narratives from attorneys who have represented detainees held at "GTMO" as well as at other overseas prisons, from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to secret CIA jails or "black sites." Mark Denbeaux and Jonathan Hafetz-themselves lawyers for detainees-collected stories that cover virtually every facet of Guantanamo, and the litigation it sparked. Together, these moving, powerful voices create a historical record of Guantanamo's legal, human, and moral failings, and provide a window into America's catastrophic effort to create a prison beyond the law. An online archive, hosted by New York University Libraries, will be available at the time of publication and will contain the complete texts as well as other accounts contributed by Guantanamo lawyers. The documents will be freely available on the Internet for research, teaching, and non-commercial uses, and will be preserved indefinitely as a historical collection. Read free excerpts from the book at http://www.theguantanamolawyers.com and explore the complete archive of narratives at http://dlib.nyu.edu/guantanamo
"Compelling, suspenseful, and deeply reported . . . Masters gives a
dramatic inside account of the fight between Spitzer and the titans
of finance."--"Newsday""" Few politicians have burst onto the
American scene with as much impact as Eliot Spitzer. As New York's
attorney general, he exposed wrongdoing by stock analysts, mutual
fund managers, and insurance brokers, and investigated corporations
that have misled or defrauded ordinary investors and consumers. And
as the next governor of New York, Spitzer is now a rising star on
the national political scene.
Employability Skills for Law Students is designed to help you: * identify the academic, practical and transferable skills that can be developed whilst studying for a law degree; * recognise the value of those skills to employers (within both law and non-law professions); * identify any gaps in your skills portfolio; * maximise opportunities to develop new skills through participation in a range of activities; * effectively demonstrate your skills to potential employers; * improve your employability prospects on graduation from university. Whether you are in your first year or your last, this book will ensure you make the most of your time at university, developing skills inside and outside the lecture theatre, so that you are in the best possible position to pursue your chosen career on graduation - as a solicitor, barrister, or a completely different profession. An interactive Online Resource Centre provides a range practical activities designed to give you opportunities to practise and receive feedback upon the skills you are developing. |
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