Family Values: How Children's Lawyers Can Help Their Clients by Advocating for Parents

Children's lawyers too often view themselves as standing in opposition to parents in dependency proceedings. In this article, the authors argue that child advocates do a disservice to their clients by not using their considerable skills, role advantages, and moral authority to actively help parents. Noting that areas of common ground far exceed those places where the children's bar and the parents' bar might part company, the authors contend that children's lawyers have an obligation to actively fight for parents' rights. In particular, spending time early in a case to ensure that appropriate reunification services are being offered is well worth the investment, as it redounds to the benefit of all parties. Several concrete practice tips are offered regarding how children's lawyers can better serve their clients by regularly advocating for parents.     

Preparation for the Practice of law—the Views of the Practicing Bar

The competence of the practicing bar has been subjected to substantial criticism in recent years. Since law schools have a virtual monopoly over access to the bar and licensure is granted without further training, legal education has been a particular focus of attack and reform efforts. Yet there has been little systematic study of what skills and knowledge are important in the actual practice of law or the relevant contributions of legal education. This study of practicing lawyers in Chicago examines the nature of the competencies important to the practice of law and the sources lawyers credit for contributing to their development.
Practitioners cite a broad range of skills, many of them not unique to the practice of law, with their importance varying by the predominant legal specialty practiced. The data further indicate that law schools play but a part in the development of skills and knowledge important to the practice of law and that experience, both prior and subsequent to graduation, plays a significant role. The evaluation of law schools' contributions is related to opportunities for further training, particularly in the context of law firm practice. There is, however, a strong general view that law schools rather uniformly concentrate on some skills to the exclusion of others and that the former are not necessarily those that lawyers think are most important to the practice of law.     

Specialization and Prestige in the Legal Profession: The Structure of Deference

The process of specialization is now well advanced within the legal profession, and the specialties have acquired clearly varying levels of prestige among the practicing bar. What are the characteristics of the specialties, or of the lawyers who practice in them, that might account for these variations in prestige? In describing the prestige differences and several of the variables that might be thought to account for them, the authors analyze the results of a survey of a large random sample of Chicago lawyers. Among the findings are a strong relationship between prestige within the legal profession and the type of clients that the specialty serves, a substantial correlation between prestige and the degree of intellectual challenge presented by the subject matter of the specialty, and the perhaps surprising result that prestige is not significantly associated with the income earned by lawyers practicing in the specialty. The authors conclude that legal specialties that regularly confront personal suffering lose social standing as a result, that prestige within the profession is directly proportional to the degree to which the specialty facilitates the conduct of corporate enterprise, and that the varying prestige of the specialties is likely to affect the political and professional power of the lawyers who practice in them and to influence the patterns of recruitment of lawyers into law practice.     

The Changing Structure of Opportunity: Recruitment and Careers in Large Law Firms

Growth and bureaucratization have begun to transform patterns of recruitment and career development in large law firms. Based on a case study of four large Chicago firms, this article examines these changes and their implications. The findings indicate that the social composition of large firms has become substantially more heterogeneous with respect to the status of law school attended, gender, and ethnoreligious background. However, data on lawyers' careers suggest that associates entering firms today face an increasingly bureaucratic organizational context marked by higher levels of turnover, earlier and more intensive specialization, decreased levels of client responsibility, and more frequent assignment to large-scale litigation. The article also addresses the dynamics of individual choice over type of work performed in firms. Lawyers initially working in litigation fields are far more likely to change fields of practice than are lawyers who begin in office practice fields, reflecting the increased tendency for firms to assign new associates to litigation as well as the alienating propensity of large-firm litigation for many associates. Paradoxically, a greater proportion of lawyers in traditionally organized, general service firms than in bureaucratically organized, specialty firms report that their choice of work was dictated by the firm. Also, somewhat surprisingly, the frequency with which firms explicitly direct lawyers into particular fields has not increased from earlier periods. The article concludes that these anomalies result from the fact that firms control the career choices of lawyers, and always have, but that the way such control is exercised varies across firms and historical periods.     

Multijurisdictional practice and the health lawyer: will your practice benefit from the new ABA model rules of professional conduct?

At the end of the twentieth century, bar scholars and regulators were reexamining two traditionally improper aspects of legal practice. The first was the multidisciplinary practice of law, which would permit lawyers to offer accounting and other professional services to their clients, and allow lawyers to share fees with non-lawyers. The second was the multijurisdictional practice of law, which would permit a lawyer licensed in one jurisdiction to practice law in other jurisdiction in which he was not admitted to the bar. Enron and other corporate scandals deflated the movement towards multidisciplinary practice, but the movement to allow multijurisdictional practice bore some limited, yet important, results. This Article argues that the American Bar Association's new Model Rules 5.5 and 8.5, which broaden the ability of healthcare lawyers to practice outside of the states in which they are admitted, are a suitable accommodation to today's mode of practice, while still preserving the states' ability to regulate lawyers and protect clients.     

The Stalking of Lawyers: A Survey Amongst Professionals in Milan

This is the first study focused on the stalking of lawyers. The authors hypothesized that these professionals are at risk of being stalked by their clients and that this stalking is ascribable to RECON type I.B. A random sample of lawyers was survived. 37.3% of 166 respondents revealed to have been stalked: not only by clients, but also by adversaries and colleagues. Data seem to confirm that the stalking of lawyers mainly belongs to RECON type I.B. Female lawyers were at greater risk than male lawyers. In family law cases, the professionals tended to be stalked by the former husbands of the lawyers' clients (p < 0.01). Several female lawyers—but no male lawyers—were threatened with harm to their family members (p < 0.05). Most of the stalking victims described psychological effects of being stalked. Who suffered physical aggression or repercussions on work was more likely to lodge a complaint (p < 0.01).     

Cause Lawyers,Political Violence,and Professionalism in Conflict

This article examines how cause lawyers in conflicted and authoritarian societies balance their professional responsibilities as lawyers with their commitment to a political cause. It is drawn from extensive interviews with both lawyers and political activists in a range of societies. It focuses on the challenges for lawyers in managing relations with violent politically‐motivated clients and their movements. Using the notion of ‘legitimation work', it seeks to examine the complex, fluid, and contingent understandings of legal professionalism that is developed in such contexts, offering three overlapping ‘ideal types’ of cause lawyers in order to better understand the meaning of legal professionalism in such sites: (a) struggle lawyers (b) human rights activists and (c) a ‘pragmatic moral community'. The article concludes by re‐examining how law is imagined in the legitimation work of cause lawyers in such settings and how that work is remembered in the transition from violence.     

Guardians at the Gate: The Backgrounds, Career Paths, and Professional Development of Private US Immigration Lawyers

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of seventy-one New York immigration lawyers who are engaged in private practice. It focuses on the lawyers' backgrounds, career paths, and early professional training and describes, inter alia, the unusual diversity of this bar, the lawyers' reasons for practicing immigration law, the ways in which they learn to practice law, and the strong sense of community within the private immigration bar. It uses the idea of communities of practice to help understand how lawyers learn from their colleagues and are influenced by them. The article identifies several factors that may contribute to the supportiveness of the bar and the strong sense of community within that practice specialty, notwithstanding its great diversity. It concludes by making some preliminary comparisons between immigration lawyers and lawyers in other practice specialties and by identifying some questions for future study.     

Client privilege,compliance and the rule of law: Swedish lawyers and money laundering prevention

Can, and will, lawyers police their clients? This article aims to shed light on the private front-line workers of the Financial Action Task Force on money laundering (FATF). The analysis is based on a study of how Swedish lawyers perceive and handle obligations to police clients within FATF style risk-based anti-money laundering/counter terrorism (AML/CTF) regulation. We find that the lawyers were reluctant to taking on the responsibility for AML/CTF, and that their front-line work was directed towards being compliant enough. Relatedly, we identify several practices of separation that serve to mediate between the conflicting aims and interests in the everyday of this form of private policing. Another finding is that the lawyers by and large position themselves as knowledgeable actors, and view risks of AML/CTF as knowable. Nevertheless, lawyers experienced a principle clash between being ‘not banks’, and being front-line workers for FATF. In particular, the lawyers perceived their role as front-line workers to be more complex due to their professional norms and ethics on client privilege, and what they saw as the proper role of lawyers, being in conflict with the obligation to report clients and their transactions. In concluding, we suggest that paying more attention to the everyday experience of front-line workers when devising regulatory tools may be a way to promote engagement in ‘true’ crime prevention on their part.     

关于律师政治素质和社会责任问题的思考

律师是为当事人提供法律服务的执业人员,具备坚实的法律素养是其基本要求,而要成为一名真正合格乃至优秀的律师,就必须同时具备良好的政治素质和政治敏锐性,要勇于承担维护公平正义的社会责任。我国律师业所面临的困境与法治处于发展状态有关,律师的困境就是法治的困境,而解决或缓解律师和律师业困境的首要问题是如何处理好律师政治素质与社会责任的问题。     

Client Influence and the Contingency of Professionalism: The Work of Elite Corporate Lawyers in China

This study examines how the professional work of elite corporate lawyers is constructed by influence from different types of clients. The data presented include interviews with 24 lawyers from six elite corporate law firms in China and the author's participant-observation in one of the firms. For these elite Chinese corporate law firms, foreign corporations, state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises constitute their extremely diversified client types. Accordingly, lawyers' work becomes flexible and adaptive to accommodate the different demands of the clients. Meanwhile, client influence on lawyers' professional work is mediated by the division of labor within the corporate law firm: whereas partners have solid control over the process of diagnosis, inference, and treatment and thus enjoy a high degree of professional autonomy, associates are largely stripped of this cultural machinery in the workplace, and their work becomes vulnerable to client influence. As a result, client influence on professional work appears to decrease with a lawyer's seniority.     

FITTING THE FORUM TO THE FAMILY FUSS

This article analyzes advantages and disadvantages of mediation, collaborative law, and cooperative law based on the parties' capabilities, attitudes about professional services, and assessments of and preferences about the risks of various procedures. Each of these procedures has virtues and there is great value in providing clients and practitioners with a choice of procedures. Under collaborative and cooperative law, lawyers and clients agree to focus exclusively on negotiation from the outset the case, typically using a problem-solving process. Collaborative law involves a written "disqualification agreement" between all the parties and their lawyers under which lawyers are disqualified from representing parties in litigation if either party chooses to litigate. Cooperative law is similar but does not use the disqualification agreement. Because most communities do not have lawyers offering cooperative law, collaborative law groups should encourage at least some of their members to offer clients the option of cooperative law.     

Making a Difference? Legal Representation in Employment Tribunal Cases: Evidence from a Survey of Representatives

Representatives play a critical rôle in Employment Tribunal(ET) cases in the UK. Using a recently published survey of representativesin ET cases, this article explores the particular rôleof lawyers. The key results are that lawyers may both shortenand lengthen case resolution by encouraging early withdrawaland late tribunal resolution of cases respectively. They alsoappear to impact on the terms of settlement, achieving betteroutcomes for their clients than alternative representative types.     

Professional Projects of Elite Chicago Lawyers, 1950–1974

This article reports results of an inquiry into the composition and policies of the leaders of the Chicago Bar Association. The leadership cadre was partitioned into three status groups on the basis of background characteristics and law school attended. Outside educational elites, dominating the board during the early 1950s, pursued policies that defended prestigious areas of legal work from other encroaching professionals and sought to constrain the plaintiff side of the personal injury bar. Local ethnic elites obtained a share of the leadership during the mid-1960s and transformed the judicial politics of the CBA to conform to local Democratic party objectives. At the center of the leadership cadre was a group of local aristocrats, well connected to major corporate and civic organizations, whose participation in the leadership roles fluctuated less dramatically than that of the other groups. A review of policies suggests that the local aristocrats were responsible to some extent for integrating the various specialized projects pursued by disparate segments of the Chicago bar. Detailed examination of the composition and policies of this local bar leads to the conclusion that associations of the legal profession are capable of accommodating diverse interests to an extent not previously measured or assessed.     

WHAT FAMILY LAWYERS ARE REALLY DOING WHEN THEY NEGOTIATE

How should lawyers negotiate? This article outlines an empirical study of how lawyers rate each other in negotiation behaviors. After discussing what skills are needed for effective negotiation behavior, we then look more closely at how family lawyers in particular are negotiating. Examining some troubling data, we find that family lawyers appear to be more adversarial and less problem solving than other types of practitioners. We conclude by discussing why this might be so and what the family law bar and family law professors should be doing in the future to address this problem.     

Indicators of Democracy in Professional Associations: Elite Recruitment, Turnover, and Decision Making in a Metropolitan Bar Association

This study considers political structure in bar associations with respect to one central problem: the tension between democracy and oligarchy in the internal politics of bar associations. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical material, the authors outline a series of indicators on which the degree of democracy and oligarchy in the organized bar may be measured and then apply these criteria to the Chicago Bar Association from 1950 through 1974. The authors briefly review writings on the political structure of bar associations in the United States and note relevant theoretical perspectives on the politics of voluntary associations. They distinguish several patterns of oligarchy and democracy and explore the consequences of certain trends for the Chicago Bar Association and other bar associations.     

The Politics of Legal Representation: The Influence of Local Politics on the Behavior of Poverty Lawyers

This article explores the influence of local groups on the strategies employed by poverty lawyers in representing clients. Data collected from one suburban legal services program suggest that despite attitudinal predispositions to initiate law reform litigation, poverty lawyers are constrained in their use of social reform strategies by local organizations opposed to such activity. I argue that politics inevitably affect poverty lawyer behavior due to the nature of legal services work and programmatic features of the national Legal Services Corporation. I assess the implications of these findings for federal control of local programs.     

Practice and Privilege: Social Change and the Structure of Large Law Firms

Despite dramatic changes in size and specialization, large law firms have remained remarkably unchanged in other respects. Introducing research on major Chicago law firms, this article examines how large law firms have changed so much by changing so little. It proposes a theory of law firm growth emphasizing the relationship between changes in the market for sophisticated legal services and changes in the approach law firms have taken to organizing their practices. The author discusses the organizational structure of large law firms, giving particular attention to the various roles that lawyers play in such firms. After speculating on trends affecting large law firms, he points to implications of these trends for law and social change.     

Origin Myths,Contracts, and the Hunt for Pari Passu

We use interviews with corporate lawyers and a data set of contracts to explore an elite area of legal practice: sovereign bond lending. Sovereign debt lawyers work at prestigious global law firms, yet the contracts they produce include some terms that defy explanation. Lawyers often account for the existence of these terms through origin myths. Focusing on one contract term, the pari passu clause, we explore two puzzling aspects of these myths. First, we demonstrate that the myths are inaccurate as to both the clause's origin and the role of lawyers in contract drafting. Second, the myths often are unflattering, inaccurately portraying lawyers as engaged in little more than rote copying. We probe this disjuncture between the myths and lawyers' actual practices and explore why contracts origin myths might hold such appeal for this elite segment of the bar.