Building Trust: Social Capital, Distributive Justice, and Loyalty to the Firm

Trust is essential to successful business relations, particularly to the efficient operation of law firms. Trust fosters productive working relationships, favorable reputations, and a lucrative clientele. This paper contributes to research on law firm development through a consideration of social dynamics within law firms beyond traditional emphases on trading relationships and community solidarity. We introduce a social capital perspective on the evolution of trust and its consequences for commitment to the law firm. We argue that trust, specifically in the form of perceived distributive justice, is created and nurtured through social integration among law firm members. Yet, for women, who continue to be denied full access to these social networks and professional rewards, trust is undermined. Exclusion and emerging distrust prompt women to contemplate leaving their respective firms. This paper examines the bases of differential levels of trust and their impact on lawyers'intentions to leave practice.     

The Challenge of Antisocial Behaviour: New Relationships between the State, Children and Parents

Relationships between children, parents and the state do notremain the same over time and are not necessarily consistentat any one time across policy arenas. These relationships, though,can remain unexamined and individually negotiated until theyare highlighted by major policy change. Such a change has recentlyoccured in Scotland, where the Antisocial Behaviour etc. (Scotland)Act 2004 has extended Antisocial Behaviour Orders (ASBOs) tochildren and introduced Parenting Orders (POs), which can requireparents to attend counselling or guidance sessions. ASBOs shiftstate intervention from focusing on children’s welfareand needs to focusing on their behaviour. The welfare-basedchildren’s hearing system will no longer be the primarydecision-making forum as the court is the decision-maker forboth these new orders. POs emphasize parents’ responsibilityfor controlling their children. POs provide a direct route forparents to receive support, which they did not have before,but only through a compulsory order. Both children and theirparents will be held responsible to their communities’values, in new court-enforced mechanisms.     

Supplemental instruction: Students helping students’ learning at university college London (UCL) and university of central Lancashire (UCLAN)

Abstract

The Supplemental Instruction (SI) programme aims to provide an untapped learning resource for academics interested in developing first year students’ cognitive capabilities alongside their personal skills. This study examines whether the pilot SI programme meets the needs of first year students in their academic and personal development within the Law faculties of UCL and UCLAN. Whereas the US model places prime emphasis on increasing grades, the UK model develops more holistically to include both cognitive and affective aspects of learning, in which the benefits to the second year Leaders become as important as the outcomes for first year students.     

Legal Transnationalism: The Relationship between Transnational Social Movement Building and International Law

This article examines the compelling enigma of how the introduction of a new international law, the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation (NAALC), helped stimulate labor cooperation and collaboration in the 1990s. It offers a theory of legal transnationalism—defined as processes by which international laws and legal mechanisms facilitate social movement building at the transnational level—that explains how nascent international legal institutions and mechanisms can help develop collective interests, build social movements, and, ultimately, stimulate cross‐border collaboration and cooperation. It identifies three primary dimensions of legal transnationalism that explain how international laws stimulate and constrain movement building through: (1) formation of collective identity and interests (constitutive effects), (2) facilitation of collective action (mobilization effects), and (3) adjudication and enforcement (redress effects).     

Next generation of individual account pension reforms in Latin America

Latin America led the world in introducing individual retirement accounts intended to complement or replace defined benefit state-sponsored, pay-as-you-go systems. After Chile implemented the first system in 1981, a number of other Latin American countries incorporated privately managed individual accounts as part of their retirement income systems beginning in the 1990s. This article examines the subsequent "reform of the reform" of these pension systems, with a focus on the recent overhaul of the Chilean system and major reforms in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. The authors analyze key elements of pension reform in the region relating to individual accounts: system coverage, fees, competition, investment, the impact of gender on benefits, financial education, voluntary savings, and payouts.     

The Views of Psychologists,Lawyers, and Judges on Key Components and the Quality of Child Custody Evaluations in Australia

This study aimed to understand the expectations of and the agreement between professional groups regarding the quality of single‐expert reports written by psychologists (known as child custody evaluations in the United States). 13 psychologists, 18 family lawyers, 26 children's lawyers, and 8 judges (N = 65) in New South Wales, Australia, rated the overall quality of reports and the quality of various components of them. Interprofessional congruence on importance ratings allowed key components to be derived. The results revealed that the overall quality of reports was rated positively, however, significant discrepancies were found between importance and quality ratings on the various components, indicating that reports fall short of expectations in many areas.