This book brings together articles by leading international scholars from diverse disciplinary perspectives who focus on the legal, social and cultural dimensions of intellectual properties - including patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and rights of publicity. These articles employ a creatively eclectic approach to the study of intellectual property law and policy viewed through the lenses of traditional doctrinal analysis, historical perspectives, critical cultural study, and empirical examinations of intellectual property in action. The volume also directs critical attention to the significance of intellectual property in contemporary processes of globalization and political economy.

Jerome Carlin's LAWYERS ON THEIR OWN is a recognized, foundational study of lawyers in individual practice in an urban setting. It became the template for an important form of social science research into lawyers in solo practice. The first extensive and grounded study of individual practitioners and their candid quotes in interviews, Carlin exposed the unique practices, class divides, ethical dilemmas and ultimate resentments of a little-viewed subgroup of attorneys and their clients. This book's findings and research methodology influenced many such studies of attorneys in action that followed it. The author's succinct and supported writing has proved to be an enduring and important study in this field of socio-legal research. Updated with the author's extensive introduction to the second edition, as well as a new foreword by law professor William Gallagher, this modern republication is presented to a new generation of readers and researchers into the daily lives, work, business angles and unique challenges of solo and individual-client law practice.