Innovation. How to go about it, what it can do for your business - what even is it? Can innovation be applied in the legal environment? Such is the interest and appetite for legal innovation that, in the last 18 months, ARK has published over a dozen titles with innovation in their remit, covering everything from knowledge management to pricing, from marketing to recruitment, and everything in between. This compilation deep-dives into the key areas that drive innovation forward in the legal profession, combining the views and experiences of 14 leaders in their fields.

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.

Description | View table of contents Look insideLook inside Author(s): Clare Jones , Sarah Goulbourne , Steve Couch Publication date: Aug 2021 Format: Softback Pages: 180 Price: GBP65.00 ISBN: 9781787424265 Lawyers of the 2020s operate in a ferociously competitive world and face unprecedented complexity, change and conflicting demands. As well as regulatory, legislative, economic and political uncertainty, other challenges include pricing pressures, technological advances, and market innovation. In this climate, professional development is ever more critical and the ambitious legal professional must develop their own competitive strategy to survive and thrive. In this book, authors Clare Jones, Steve Couch and Hannah Beko from leading challenger law firm gunnercooke, apply real-life, evidence-based coaching techniques and step-by-step practices exclusively to the legal sector. It also features a foreword written by Sarah Goulbourne. Through exploring ten core areas of professional development for lawyers, discover how to unleash yourself from your barriers and future-proof your legal career today. Content covers everything from self-discovery, through to thought-leadership and pitching as well as the skills and behaviours that underpin success. Readers are invited to create their own dynamic personal development programme and are challenged to hold themselves accountable for delivering it. This title will help senior level lawyers looking to build a lasting reputation, successful practice and sustainable, balanced career. It will provide clarity about your value and a deeper understanding of how to develop client relationships, as well as uncovering challenges to your progress and identifying priority next steps to make everything you do more effective.

Both lionized and vilified, Claire L'Heureux-Dube has shaped the Canadian legal landscape - and in particular its highest court. Only the second woman on the Supreme Court of Canada, L'Heureux-Dube anchored her approach to cases in their social, economic, and political context. This compelling biography takes a similar tack, tracing the experience of a francophone woman within the male-dominated Quebec legal profession - and within the primarily anglophone world of the Supreme Court. In the process, Constance Backhouse enhances our understanding of the Canadian judiciary, the creation of law, the Quebec socio-legal environment, and the nation's top court.

A critical history of the Americanization of legal education in fourteen countries The second half of the twentieth century witnessed the export of American power-both hard and soft-throughout the world. What role did US cultural and economic imperialism play in legal education? American Legal Education Abroad offers an unprecedented and surprising picture of the history of legal education in fourteen countries beyond the United States. Each study in this book represents a critical history of the Americanization of legal education, reexamining prevailing narratives of exportation, transplantation, and imperialism. Collectively, these studies challenge the conventional wisdom that American ideas and practices have dominated globally. Editors Susan Bartie and David Sandomierski and their contributors suggest that to understand legal education and to respond thoughtfully to the mounting present-day challenges, it is essential to look beyond a particular region and consider not only the ideas behind legal education but also the broader historical, political, and cultural factors that have shaped them. American Legal Education Abroad begins with an important foundational history by leading Harvard Law School historian Bruce Kimball, who explains the factors that created a transportable American legal model, and the book concludes with reflections from two prominent American law professors, Susan Carle and Bob Gordon, whose observations on recent disruptions within US law schools suggest that their influence within the global order of legal education may soon fall into further decline. This book should be considered an invaluable resource for anyone in the field of law.

For increasingly data-savvy clients, lawyers can no longer give "it depends" answers rooted in anecdata. Clients insist that their lawyers justify their reasoning, and with more than a limited set of war stories. The considered judgment of an experienced lawyer is unquestionably valuable. However, on balance, clients would rather have the considered judgment of an experienced lawyer informed by the most relevant information required to answer their questions. Data-Driven Law: Data Analytics and the New Legal Services helps legal professionals meet the challenges posed by a data-driven approach to delivering legal services. Its chapters are written by leading experts who cover such topics as: Mining legal data Computational law Uncovering bias through the use of Big Data Quantifying the quality of legal services Data mining and decision-making Contract analytics and contract standards In addition to providing clients with data-based insight, legal firms can track a matter with data from beginning to end, from the marketing spend through to the type of matter, hours spent, billed, and collected, including metrics on profitability and success. Firms can organize and collect documents after a matter and even automate them for reuse. Data on marketing related to a matter can be an amazing source of insight about which practice areas are most profitable. Data-driven decision-making requires firms to think differently about their workflow. Most firms warehouse their files, never to be seen again after the matter closes. Running a data-driven firm requires lawyers and their teams to treat information about the work as part of the service, and to collect, standardize, and analyze matter data from cradle to grave. More than anything, using data in a law practice requires a different mindset about the value of this information. This book helps legal professionals to develop this data-driven mindset.

Assessing the legal and practical questions posed by the use of artificial intelligence in national security matters.The increasing use of artificial intelligence poses challenges and opportunities for nearly all aspects of society, including the military and other elements of the national security establishment. This book addresses how national security law can and should be applied to artificial intelligence, which enables a wide range of decisions and actions not contemplated by current law. James Baker, an expert in national security law and process, adopts a realistic approach in assessing how the law-even when not directly addressing artificial intelligence-can be used, or even misused, to regulate this new technology. His new book covers, among other topics, national security process, constitutional law, the law of armed conflict, arms control, and academic and corporate ethics. With his own background as a judge, he examines potential points of contention and litigation in an area where the law is still evolving and might not yet provide clear and certain answers. The Centaur's Dilemma also analyzes potential risks associated with the use of artificial intelligence in the realm of national security-including the challenges of machine-human interface, operating (or not operating) the national-security decision-making process at machine speed, and the perils of a technology arms race. Written in plain English, The Centaur's Dilemma will help guide policymakers, lawyers, and technology experts as they deal with the many legal questions that will arise when using artificial intelligence to plan and carry out the actions required for the nation's defense.

Most people understand that regulations have a direct bearing on their access to things such as clean air and water and safe working environments. However, in the United States, few people make the connection between how legal services are regulated and how difficult it is for them to access legal services. Indeed, on the question of affordable and accessible civil justice, the World Justice Project ranks the US 94th out of 113 countries, behind Albania, Belarus, Myanmar, and Russia. For decades academics and others have debated whether the legal profession is self-regulated and, if it is, whether it should be. But is it the right debate? Self-regulation-or not-does not obviate the need for effective regulation. Independent, accountable, and transparent regulatory bodies, effective oversight of those bodies, the genuine engagement of citizens in the regulatory process, evidence-based research to fully assess the impact of regulation, and an approach to regulation that is proportionate and targeted to actual risks are essential for effective regulation. Through the lens of the adoption of alternative structures, this book explains how England, Wales, and Australia have, by embracing these essential elements, successfully modernized their regulatory environments for legal services, and how Canada has taken firm steps down its own path to the same. In contrast, by rejecting these elements, the United States remains paralyzed in an unproductive regulatory environment for legal services. This book provides a blueprint for how the US can take inspiration from its common law sisters to breathe new life into its regulatory environment for legal services. Ultimately, modernization will require more-and better-regulation that is financed publicly through equitable, progressive revenue sources.

The last ten years have been a period of extraordinary change for law firms. The rapid growth of corporate law firms and the emergence of global mega-firms such as Clifford Chance, Linklaters, and Freshfields, have strained the traditional partnership model of management. Some managers of law firms are appalled at the creeping 'corporatism' that they fear may result. However a growing number believe that it is time to move on and adopt more contemporary forms of structure and management. Successfully meeting the challenges of this new business environment is vital for the continuing prosperity of law firms. Featuring contributions from both management researchers and legal practitioners, Managing the Modern Law Firm presents the latest insights from Management Studies in an approachable, practical, and relevant manner for lawyers and other professionals involved directly and indirectly with the management of law firms.

For several years legal professions across the world have, to varying degrees, been undergoing dramatic changes as a result of a range of forces such as globalization, diversification and changes in regulation. In many jurisdictions the extent of these transformations have led to a process of professional fragmentation and generated uncertainty at institutional, organisational and individual levels about the nature and future of legal professionalism. As a result legal education is in flux in many of jurisdictions including the United States, the UK and Australia, with further effects in other Common Law and some Civil law countries. The situation in the UK exemplifies the sense of uncertainty and crisis, with a growing number of pathways into law; an increasing surplus of law graduates to graduate entry positions and most recently proposals for reform of legal education and training by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). This collection addresses both current and historical approaches showing that some problems which appear to be modern are endemic, that there are still some important prospects for change and that policy issues may be more important than the interests of lawyers and educators. This makes this volume a source of interest to lawyers, law students, academic and policy makers as well as the discerning public. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the Legal Profession.

A provocative, accessible, and cleverly illustrated guide to legal principles and practice, by a law instructor and internationally experienced attorney

This might be the most useful book law students ever read. Not because it contains the details of case law, but because it teaches them how to think like a lawyer. From the fundamentals of effective argument to the principles, structures, and assumptions underlying our legal system, 101 Things I Learned in Law School makes the impenetrable clear and the complex understandable. Illustrated lessons summarize landmark cases and illuminate a fascinating range of questions, including:

* What is the difference between honesty and truthfulness?
* Why is circumstantial evidence often better than direct evidence?
* How does one find the proper sources to substantiate a legal argument?
* Why do states deliberately pass unconstitutional laws?
* How can testimony from a hostile witness be helpful?

Written by an internationally experienced attorney and law instructor, 101 Things I Learned in Law School is a concise, highly readable resource for law students, graduates, professionals, and anyone else fascinated--or confused--by our legal system.

Now available in a paperback edition, law and technology guru Richard Susskind, author of bestselling The Future of Law, brings together in one volume eleven significant essays on the application of IT to legal practice and the administration of justice, including key topics such as knowledge management and the impact of electronic commerce and electronic government. This edition includes a new Preface, in which Susskind puts forward his views on the burst of the dotcom bubble, offers an extension to his Grid to cover in-house lawyers, and comments on the next big things in this area: e-learning, document assembly, online dispute resolution, e-mail management, and matter-centric systems.

In this penetrating new book, Deborah L. Rhode goes beyond the commonplace attacks on lawyers to provide the first systematic study of the structural problems confronting the legal profession. A past president of the Association of American Law Schools and senior counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Clinton's impeachment proceedings, Rhode brings an insider's knowledge to the labyrinthine complexities of how the law works, or fails to work, for most Americans and often for lawyers themselves.

In the updated, fourth edition of this classic text which has been translated into over a dozen languages, constitutional scholar and Columbia Law School professor E. Allan Farnsworth provides a clear explanation of the structure and function of the U.S. legal system in one handy reference. AnIntroduction to the Legal System of the United States, Fourth Edition is designed to be a general introduction to the structure and function of the legal system of the United States, and is especially useful for those readers who lack familiarity with fundamental establishments and practices.
This text also gives the reader a clear understanding of how to research the law, the importance of case law versus statutes, and the difference between private and public law. It illustrates issues that may be confusing or troublesome and provides a solid general overview. It includes a new introduction by Steve Sheppard.

The first Hispanic and third woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor has become an instant American icon. Now, with a candor and intimacy never undertaken by a sitting Justice, she recounts her life from a Bronx housing project to the federal bench, a journey that offers an inspiring testament to her own extraordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself.
Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself. She would learn to give herself the insulin shots she needed to survive and soon imagined a path to a different life. With only television characters for her professional role models, and little understanding of what was involved, she determined to become a lawyer, a dream that would sustain her on an unlikely course, from valedictorian of her high school class to the highest honors at Princeton, Yale Law School, the New York County District Attorney's office, private practice, and appointment to the Federal District Court before the age of forty. Along the way we see how she was shaped by her invaluable mentors, a failed marriage, and the modern version of extended family she has created from cherished friends and their children. Through her still-astonished eyes, America's infinite possibilities are envisioned anew in this warm and honest book, destined to become a classic of self-invention and self-discovery.

Master the complexities of modern intellectual property law with this comprehensive, reader-friendly text! Throughout the book, you'll find sample agreements, forms, checklists of paralegal tasks, statutes, realistic case studies, and excerpts of real cases involving interesting issues (such as the copyright ability of the Batmobile, tattoos) that will help you prepare for a successful career as a paralegal.

The authors look at how divorce lawyers actually work to address the question of legal professionalism in practice. Through a detailed and systematic study of legal practice at the micro level, they show how lawyers create their own controls over work through their social relationships, formal and informal norms, common knowledge, and shared values. While much of the research on legal professionalism centers on the formal standards of the bar as reflected in codes of professional responsibility, Mather et al. show how the discretionary judgments that lawyers make, and the choices they face, are actually understood in relation to norms and standards of other lawyers with whom they interact or compare themselves.