From litigator to researcher: the burdens and benefits of moving between the profession and the academy

A researcher who understands litigation practice and is connected to the profession has advantages in terms of accessing and interpreting the litigation setting. However, the knowledge and connections complicate relationships to research participants. This article considers a research method designed to provide insight into how litigants in person conduct litigation and how the professional participants (lawyers, court staff and judges) respond to them. The researcher’s previous roles of judges’ clerk and lawyer helped secure access and understanding but created issues with recognising and managing participant reactivity, maintaining critical distance, as well as an ethical and personal struggle in watching a legal case heading for disaster. The research site, the ‘large village’ of New Zealand with its tight-knit closely networked legal profession, compounded these issues. The article concludes that despite these difficulties, watching litigation with anthropological curiosity resulted not only in insights about the research questions but also the importance in litigation practice of engaging with the client’s social world.     

Training parenting plan evaluators: Looking towards the future

Standards of practice for parenting plan evaluations continue to evolve, informed by advances in research and the development of innovative, evidence-based approaches to assessment and intervention. Parenting plan evaluators are asked to inform the court, parents, and other professionals on how to address the complex needs of increasingly diverse families amid reorganization, high conflict, and crisis. How can we attract and properly train new mental health professionals to do important work in an increasingly strained adversarial system? How can evaluators keep up with these advances over the course of their careers? How can they deepen and refine their skills to work with a diverse array of individuals, family constellations and an enormous range of family circumstances? And how can evaluators care for their own well-being and their colleagues? In this article, the authors describe a multi-dimensional approach to training both new and experienced custody evaluators that includes imparting baseline knowledge on how to conduct quality parenting plan evaluations as a starting point. We discuss a variety of modalities and approaches that can enable evaluators to deepen and expand their skills over the years, contribute to the diverse community of family law professionals, and manage the exceptional demands of working in this field.     

The state of the nation: diversity and the British legal academy

In this short piece, I set out briefly what we know about the challenge of diversity in the legal academy from existing scholarship. That field, in the UK at least, is sparse. I then go on to present a snapshot of the legal academy using data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). I do this as the start of a much larger project on diversity and the legal academy that I plan to undertake over the next year. My argument is rather simple. The diversity of the legal academy reflects neither the diversity of our law student bodies nor the diversity of the wider population. Such diversity is vital for a number of reasons. My hope is that this piece can be the start of a dialogue on an important and largely ignored topic, and that further research will be done in this area.     

Looking Forward to Play: The Persuasive Strategies of a Dog

The author analyses, with semiotic tools, the behaviour of a dog that she observed in Trieste, along the famous promenade called “Barcola”. The animal had been playing with its masters on the seashore and then brought back onto the avenue ready to go home. The dog repeatedly tried, with different strategies, to convince its masters to return to shore and continue their play. The tripling of the trials that is so typical of fairy tales was observed to have been enacted: exactly three times, the dog reproduced the sequence of running towards the parapet, glancing over the sea with guile, running towards its masters, jumping and imploring in front of them, renouncing and walking in a backward position with a lolling head. It is argued that this behaviour demonstrates a highly structured semantic, narrative and communicative competence. This study aims at connecting Semiotics and the ecological approach to cognition that takes into account not only strictly cognitive activities but a wider spectrum of strategies through which an animal develops the adaptive behaviour requested by specific environmental conditions.     

The MMPI-2 and statisfactory police academy performance: Differences and correlations

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and its later revision (MMPI-2) have been the most frequently employed psychological instrument in the selection of law enforcement officers (Bartol, 1996). In this study, state police trooper cadets were given a broad number of measures including the MMPI-2 prior to academy admission. Their performance at the police academy was then analyzed and related to their performance on the MMPI-2. Using step-wise multiple linear regression. Hy3 and Sc4 scores produced significant negative correlation’s with academy final grade point average. Student’s unpaired 1-tests between successful and unsuccessful cadets revealed differences between the groups for several MMPI-2 subscales including, but not limited to, K, MA, and SI, Lastly, logistic regression revealed no single subscale, or combination of subscales, which significantly predicted classification of the cadets as either successful or unsuccessful based on their MMPI-2 scores alone. Author Note: Elements of this article have been presented at the 27^th Annual Conference of the Society of Police and Criminal Psychology in Portland, OR, October 1998.     

The legal profession in Troikaland: before and after the Irish bailout

Ireland is feeling a chill wind of austerity emanating from ‘the Troika’; the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, this paper concerns an altogether different Troika: an ‘Unholy Trinity’ of bankers, property developers and lawyers. It is argued herein that the combined activities of this Unholy Trinity contributed to the growth of the property bubble, the banking crisis and Ireland's subsequent economic collapse. Whilst the roles of bankers and property developers in the demise of Ireland's ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy have been extensively documented, the role of lawyers has received less attention. This paper seeks to correct the current discursive imbalance. First, the paper outlines the ‘Unholy Trinity’ hypothesis which postulates the existence of a tripartite grouping of social actors that contributed to the Irish economic collapse. A case study of Michael Lynn, property-developer-lawyer is presented, which examines the regulatory failings which Lynn manipulated so effectively. A brief account is also given of the sequence of events which culminated in the receipt of the Troika bailout. Finally, the paper assesses whether the reforms contained in the Legal Services Regulation Bill (LSRB) 2011 will be sufficient to rectify the regulatory failures which are identified herein.     

后现代的制度向往

现代制度文明是西方文化数千年来艰辛探索的智慧成就,然而,它在当下却遭遇了现代性和后现代时空环境移位的双重冲击,显出了转型期的困惑与窘境。在分析了西方现代性发生的历史原因与逻辑,辨析了西方制度文明的长短优劣之后,可以得出结论,这种文化和制度形态与后现代有根柢性的缺陷。因故,后现代的制度文明当有他途综合与重构的必要。其中,东方的文化和制度形态,有不可多得的模型意义及价值。     

Legal profession in Britain: The 1992 conundrum

In an era of change, the year 1992 will be significant for some lawyers while irrelevant to others. Among solicitors big City firms are prospering, but those who depend on legal aid feel the pinch. The Bar has long‐term problems. Many of these developments are irreversible, argues Marcel Berlins in an Article in the “Financial Times” written shortly before the Lord Chancellor's recent announcement of proposed reforms.     

The healing profession needs healers: the crisis in medical education

In this article, Dean and professor Albert E. Gunn explains that there is something wrong with the medical profession today. The lack of opposition by physicians to current practices that contravene basic human nature is disturbing. Gunn believes an origin of the problem lies in the process of the selection of medical students. Selection has been biased against the very traits that should make a person a good, caring physician. Gunn recommends looking favorably upon, even recruiting, applicants with a broad education in such subjects as history, philosophy, and literature, rather than just basic, technical science knowledge that they are currently being encouraged to study. Applicants should be recruited who are highly educated and able to think for themselves on important issues. Another bias the author has observed is that against applicants who possess a religiously justified morality. Such applicants are asked to justify and defend such a stance. Gunn believes that the fact that applicants who possess these traits are not considered highly desirable, much less preferred, is the basis of the deterioration of the medical profession, and recruiting such independent-minded, ethical, religiously motivated candidates could be the answer to reviving it.     

中国律师职业道德：历史回顾与展望

律师职业道德的绝大多数内容,是对律师执业活动具体操作加以指导的规范。因此,律师职业道德的主体内容从性质上讲,应当是一种程序法。从中国目前的律师职业道德规范的渊源来看,一部分是以法律、部门规章等法律规范形式体现的,另一部分,则是以律师协会所制定的行业规范的形式体现的。二者虽然都具有现实的约束性,但是却存在很大的差别。律师协会制定的行业规范并不是法律,对于律师协会进行的行业处分,也不能采取诉讼形式来加以救济。此外, 律师协会制定行业规范的背景,是律师管理的"两结合"体制。这种行业规范,无疑契合了律师行业的独立与自律特征,充满了行业自律的色彩。本文所探讨的中国律师的职业道德, 主要是律师协会制定的律师行业规范。     

The making of the Canadian legal profession: a hybrid heritage

The Canadian legal profession emerged from the confluence of two distinct traditions: the American and the English. The colonies of British North America followed the pre-revolutionary American model of a unified legal profession, according to which all lawyers could practise as barristers and solicitors. American and Canadian lawyers pursued a client- and market-driven, eclectic type of practice that was receptive to innovations – such as the large law firm, the contingency fee, and university legal education – that were strongly resisted in England. On the governance side, however, Canadian lawyers created an indigenous but English-inflected model whereby professional self-governance was delegated to a statutorily-created body that had the power to compel all lawyers to join if they wished to practise law. With their commitment to client-centred service and strong governance, Canadian lawyers long enjoyed a cooperative and productive relationship with provincial governments, unlike the adversarial one characteristic of the United States or the long benign neglect of the legal professions by the English state. It is argued that this historical pattern may help to explain the continuing strength of the self-governance model in Canada at a time when it is being questioned and radically reformed elsewhere in the common law world.     

Academic freedom as insubordination: the legalisation of the academy

Australian academics, like their overseas counterparts, have, over recent years, felt an attenuation of the freedom traditionally ascribed to the academic. This attenuation has been accompanied by termination of employment, legal proceedings, and limitations placed on use of facilities or previously enjoyed freedoms. This paper considers the notion of academic freedom, and its traditional justification. It assesses the basis of that justification in the changing environment of higher education, and asserts that the need for academic freedom is not diminished by the commercialisation of the academy. Quite the reverse is the case. The paper considers the legal justifications for attacks on academic freedom, and the premises upon which they are based, with a view to arming the academic against such justifications.     

关注律师队伍建设

律师队伍建设已经成为2004年司法行政工作的“重头戏”。今年1月,胡锦涛总书记、吴邦国委员长、温家宝总理等中央领导就进一步加强律师队伍建设作了语重心长、高屋建瓴的重要指示。今年3月下旬司法部专门召开了全国律师队伍建设工作会议,明确提出建设一支坚持信念、精通法律、维护正义、恪守诚信的高素质律师队伍。加强律师队伍建设是维护司法公正、促进依法治国的重要举措,也是坚持执政为民、防止司法腐败的必要保证。