1st Edition

Alternative Perspectives on Lawyers and Legal Ethics Reimagining the Profession

Edited By Reid Mortensen, Francesca Bartlett, Kieran Tranter Copyright 2011
    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    304 Pages
    by Routledge

    The study of legal ethics and the legal profession has emerged as a distinct and important field of scholarship over the last 30 years. However, as in other disciplines, academic recognition can in turn entrench static and powerful meta-theories and narratives about professional ethos and practise, this collection seeks to disrupt this homogenising impulse and to present alternative voices by bringing together a range of international scholars writing about legal ethics and the legal profession.

    The book features significant and timely contributions which take contemporary and non-mainstream perspectives on the current and future shape of the legal profession. The essays not only describe the rapidly changing profession but canvas different approaches to scholarship on the legal profession. The collection seeks to explore a diverse and contextualised profession from a number of angles. Authors examine how the public sees lawyers and how lawyers see their own profession; how we practise law and how this practice shapes lawyers; how such cultural and professional practice intersects with institutional structures of the law to create certain legal outcomes; and how we regulate the legal profession to modify or institute ethical practice.

    The volume provides insights into legal culture and ethics from the perspective of authors from Australia, Canada, England, the United States, New Zealand and Kenya – a diversity of national perspectives that give valuable insights into developments in the profession at the local and global level. It also illustrates diversity within the profession by tracing differing professional career trajectories based on raced or gendered barriers, alternative ethical strategies and the impact of organisational cultures in which lawyers practice.

    1. Introduction, Francesca Bartlett, Reid Mortensen and Kieran Tranter  2. Global Continental Shifts to a New Governance Paradigm in Lawyer Regulation and Consumer Protection: Riding the Wave, Judith L. Maute  3. Our Common Future: The Imperative for Contextual Ethics in a Connected World, Vivien Holmes and Simon Rice  4. The Emperor’s New Clothes: From Atticus Finch to Denny Crane, Paula Baron  5. Doing Good by Stealth: Professional Ethics and Moral Choices in The Verdict and Regarding Henry, Rachel Spencer  6. Solicitors as Imagined Masculine, Family Mediators as Fictive Feminine and the Hybridization of Divorce Solicitors, Lisa Webley  7. Stein’s Ethic of Care: An Alternative Perspective to Reflections on Women Lawyering, Elizabeth Gachenga  8. Gender, Ethics and the Discretion Not to Prosecute in the ‘Interests of Justice’ Under The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, Tina Dolgopol  9. Exploring the Potential of Contextual Ethics in Mediation, Rachael Field  10. Nefarious Conduct and the ‘Fit and Proper Person’ Test, Duncan Webb  11. Legal Ethics and Regulatory Legitimacy: Regulating Lawyers for Personal Misconduct, Alice Woolley  12. The Problem of Mental Ill-Health in the Profession and a Suggested Solution, Michelle Sharp

    Biography

    Reid Mortensen is Professor of Law at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia.

    Francesca Bartlett is a Lecturer at the TC Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland, Australia.

    Kieran Tranter is a Senior Lecturer and Managing Editor of the Griffith Law Review at Griffith University, Australia.