A provisional typology of lawyer attitudes towards divorce practice

To test the proposition that attorneys in divorce may be classified into distinctive types, 46 members of the Family Law Section of the New Jersey State Bar Association completed a 61 item Lawyer Role Questionnaire (LRQ). The LRQ assessed attitudes regarding goals of and obstacles to a constructive settlement, sources of professional satisfaction, usefulness of mental health professionals, and general attitudes towards divorce and divorce clients. The modal responses on the LRQ portrayed the attorney as a fair, but tough-minded professional, primarily concerned with the welfare of children and ensuring equity. Factor analysis identified four principal attitudinal components of the LRQ: aPsychological factor, anAdvocacy factor, aSocial Work factor, and aClient as Problem factor. Hierachial cluster analysis utilizing the mean factor scores yielded two highly distinguishable attorney subgroups:Counselors (n=24), oriented to psychological and interpersonal issues and disinclined towards the use of adversarial tactics, andAdvocates (n=22), with the reverse orientation. Two subclusters of these main groups were also identified:Gladiators (n=4), with a strongly combatative stance and a highly negative attitude toward the client, andJourneymen (n=10), best characterized by their lack of enthusiasm for any of the dimensions popular with the other types. The results correspond well to the previous, but scanty, literature on lawyer dispositions. Methodological and conceptual issues raised by the study are considered and the possible relationship between lawyer type and the process and outcome of settlement negotiations is discussed.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the American Psychology-Law Society, Baltimore, Maryland, October, 1979.     

WHY PARTIES AGREE TO MEDIATE

Although proponents of mediation have identified various advantages of mediation over other dispute resolution processes, utilization rates for many mediation services remain far below the expectations of their benefactors. This naturalistic inquiry explores why clients of child protection mediation actually chose to participate in mediation, and identifies differences with proponents' views of what makes mediation desirable.     

Fairness and participation in evaluation procedures: Effects on task attitudes and performance

A laboratory study was conducted to examine the role of two components of participatory work evaluation procedures on fairness attitudes and work performance. Opportunity for influential opinion expression and knowledge of evaluation criteria were manipulated in a business simulation exercise. Thirty-eight male and 49 female undergraduates worked under a task evaluation procedure that either did or did not allow them to express their opinions to the evaluator. In addition, subjects either were or were not provided with specific information about the criteria to be used in making the performance evaluation, and they received either a favorable or an unfavorable outcome. Questionnaire responses indicated that influential opinion expression enhanced perceptions of procedural and distributive fairness independently of the outcome of the evaluation. Both knowledge of evaluation criteria and perceptions of evaluation fairness correlated with subsequent task performance. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to understanding the influence of procedural justice on attitudes and task behavior in organizational settings.     

Reviews

Jaan Valsiner, Developmental Psychology in the Soviet Union. Brighton, UK: The Harvester Press, 1988, x + 398 pp., £35.00 h/b, £12.95 p/b.

Archie Brown, ed., Political Leadership in the Soviet Union, London: Macmillan, 1989, xi + 245 pp., £35.00 h/b, £14.99 p/b.

Susan L. Clark, ed., Gorbachev's Agenda: Changes in Soviet Domestic and Foreign Policy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1989, xviii + 422 pp., $35.95 p/b.

David Wedgwood Benn, Persuasion and Soviet Politics. London: Basil Blackwell, 1989, x + 243 pp., £25.00 h/b.

Karl‐Eugen Wädekin, ed., Communist Agriculture: Farming in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. London and New York: Routledge, 1989, xviii + 331 pp., £50.00

Gary Bertsch and Christopher T. Saunders, eds., East‐West Economic Relations in the 1990s. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, and Vienna: The Vienna Institute for Comparative Economic Studies, 1989, ix + 305 pp., £45.00.

Carl G. Jacobsen ed., Soviet Foreign Policy: New Dynamics, New Themes. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1989, xv + 214 pp.

Sylvia Woodby, Gorbachev and the Decline of Ideology in Soviet Foreign Policy. Boulder: Westview Press, 1989, vii + 127 pp., $25.00 p/b.

Stephen J. Cimbala, Uncertainty and Control: Future Soviet and American Strategy. London: Pinter Publishers, 1990, viii + 183 pp., £28.00.

Alex Pravda and Peter J. S. Duncan eds., Soviet‐British Relations Since the 1970s. Cambridge, London: RIIA/Cambridge University Press, 1990, xii + 260 pp., £30.00.

Kirsten Amundsen, Soviet Strategic Interests in the North. London: Frances Pinter in association with John Spiers, 1990, x + 153 pp., £30.00.

Nicola Miller, Soviet Relations with Latin America, 1959–1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, ix + 252 pp., £25.00 or $39.50 h/b, £8.95 p/b.

Ilya Prizel, Latin America Through Soviet Eyes: the Evolution of Soviet Perceptions During the Brezhnev Era 1964–1982. Soviet and East European Studies, 72. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, xiii+249 pp., £32.50, $44.50.

Milan Hauner, What is Asia to Us? Russia's Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990, xvi + 264 pp., £30.00.

Michael Kirkwood, ed., Language Planning in the Soviet Union. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, in association with the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1989, x + 230 pp., £35.00.

Andrei Gromyko, Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1990, pp. 414, $24.95.

Ihor Kamenetsky, ed., The Tragedy of Vinnytsia: Materials on Stalin's Policy of Extermination in Ukraine (1936–1938). Toronto, New York: The Ukrainian Historical Association, 1989, 286 pp., notes, bibliography, index, illustrations, $25.00 h/b.

Dov. B. Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers 1933–1940. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989, xv + 293 pp., £44.55.

Paul LeBlanc, Lenin and the Revolutionary Party. London: Humanities Press International, 1990, xxxiv + 399 pp., £45.00.

Daniel Rancour‐Lafferiere, The Mind of Stalin: a Psychoanalytic Study. Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988, 161 pp., $17.95.     

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