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8 books match the query 'Legal ethics'

cover of An Ethics of Interrogation

An Ethics of Interrogation

Michael Skerker

University of Chicago Press, 2010

 
The act of interrogation, and the debate over its use, pervades our culture, whether through fictionalized depictions in movies and television or discussions of real-life interrogations on the news. But despite daily mentions of the practice in the media, there is a lack of informed commentary on its moral implications. Moving beyond the narrow focus on torture that has characterized most work on the subject, An Ethics of Interrogation is the first book to fully address this complex issue.
In this important new examination of a controversial subject, Michael Skerker confronts a host of philosophical and legal issues, from the right to privacy and the privilege against compelled self-incrimination to prisoner rights and the legal consequences of different modes of interrogation for both domestic criminal and foreign terror suspects. These topics raise serious questions about the morality of keeping secrets as well as the rights of suspected terrorists and insurgents. Thoughtful consideration of these subjects leads Skerker to specific policy recommendations for law enforcement, military, and intelligence professionals.
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cover of Called by Stories: Biblical Sagas and Their Challenge for Law

Called by Stories

Biblical Sagas and Their Challenge for Law

Milner S. Ball

Duke University Press, 2000

Distinguished legal scholar and Presbyterian minister Milner S. Ball examines great sagas and tales from the Bible for the light they shed on the practice of law and on the meaning of a life lived in the legal profession. Scholars and laypersons alike typically think of the law as a discipline dominated by reason and empirical methods. Ball shows that many of the dilemmas and decisions that legal professionals confront are more usefully approached through an experience of narrative in which we come to know ourselves and our actions through stories.
He begins with the story of Moses, who is obliged both to speak for God to the Hebrews and to advocate for the Hebrews before God. What, asks Ball, does Moses’s predicament say to lawyers professionally bound to zealous representation of only one client? In the story of Rachel, Ball finds insights that comprehend the role of tears and emotion in the judicial process. He relates these insights to specific contemporary situations, such as a plant closing and the subsequent movement of jobs to Mexico and legal disputes over the sovereignty of native Hawaiians. In a discussion of “The Gospel According to John,” Ball points out that the writer of this gospel is free simultaneously to be critical of law and to rely extensively on it. Ball uses this narrative to explore the boundaries of free will and independence in lawyering. By venturing into the world of powerful events and biblical characters, Ball enables readers to contest their own expectations and fundamental assumptions.
Employing legal theory, theology, and literary criticism, Called by Stories distills a wisdom in biblical texts that speaks specifically to the working life of legal professionals. As such, it will enrich lovers of narrative and poetry, ethicists, literary and biblical scholars, theologians, lawyers, law students, judges, and others who seek to discern deeper meanings in the texts that have shaped their lives.
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cover of Eat What You Kill: The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer

Eat What You Kill

The Fall of a Wall Street Lawyer

Milton C. Regan, Jr.

University of Michigan Press, 2005

"A wonderful character study of someone whose cognitive dissonance ('I am brilliant, therefore I must be doing everything correctly') led directly to his downfall. Students would do well to read this book before venturing forth into a large firm, a small firm, or any pressure-cooker environment."
-Nancy Rapoport, University of Houston Law Center

"Eat What You Kill is gripping and well written. . . . It weaves in academic commentary and understanding of professional ethics issues in a way that makes it accessible to everyone."
-Frank Partnoy, University of San Diego Law School


He had it all, and then he lost it. But why did he do it, risking everything-wealth, success, livelihood, freedom, and the security of family?

Eat What You Kill is the story of John Gellene, a rising star and bankruptcy partner at one of Wall Street's most venerable law firms. But when Gellene became entangled in a web of conflicting corporate and legal interests involving one of his clients, he was eventually charged with making false statements, indicted, found guilty of a federal crime, and sentenced to prison.

Milton C. Regan Jr. uses Gellene's case to prove that such conflicting interests are now disturbingly commonplace in the world of American corporate finance. Combining a journalist's eye with sharp psychological insight, Regan spins Gellene's story into a gripping drama of fundamental tensions in modern-day corporate practice and describes in perfect miniature the inexorable confluence of the interests of American corporations and their legal counselors.

This confluence may seem natural enough, but because these law firms serve many masters-corporations, venture capitalists, shareholder groups-it has paradoxically led to deep, pervasive conflicts of interest. Eat What You Kill gives us the story of a man trapped in this labyrinth, and reveals the individual and systemic factors that contributed to Gellene's demise.

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cover of Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context

Lawyers in Practice

Ethical Decision Making in Context

Edited by Leslie C. Levin and Lynn Mather

University of Chicago Press, 2012

How do lawyers resolve ethical dilemmas in the everyday context of their practice? What are the issues that commonly arise, and how do lawyers determine the best ways to resolve them? Until recently, efforts to answer these questions have focused primarily on rules and legal doctrine rather than the real-life situations lawyers face in legal practice.

The first book to present empirical research on ethical decision making in a variety of practice contexts, including corporate litigation, securities, immigration, and divorce law, Lawyers in Practice fills a substantial gap in the existing literature. Following an introduction emphasizing the increasing importance of understanding context in the legal profession, contributions focus on ethical dilemmas ranging from relatively narrow ethical issues to broader problems of professionalism, including the prosecutor’s obligation to disclose evidence, the management of conflicts of interest, and loyalty to clients and the court. Each chapter details the resolution of a dilemma from the practitioner’s point of view that is, in turn, set within a particular community of practice. Timely and practical, this book should be required reading for law students as well as students and scholars of law and society.

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cover of Lives of Lawyers Revisited: Transformation and Resilience in the Organizations of Practice

Lives of Lawyers Revisited

Transformation and Resilience in the Organizations of Practice

Michael J. Kelly

University of Michigan Press, 2009

The past two decades have seen profound changes in the legal profession. Lives of Lawyers Revisited extends Michael Kelly’s work in the original Lives of Lawyers, offering unique insights into the nature of these changes, examined through stories of five extraordinarily varied law practices. By placing the spotlight on organizations as phenomena that generate their own logic and tensions, Lives of Lawyers Revisited speaks to the experience of many lawyers and anticipates important issues on the professional horizon.

"Michael Kelly has done it again! His Lives of Lawyers Revisited is a very easy read about some very difficult notions like 'litigation blindness' and law as a business. It presents some fascinating perspectives on our profession."
—J. Michael McWilliams, Past President, American Bar Association

"The best single book about the American realities and possibilities of the American legal profession, combining an empathic and insightful account of law practice with a penetrating analysis of the wider context of professional work."
—Marc Galanter, University of Wisconsin

"Michael Kelly believes that professional values and conduct are not realized in codes, but in the experiences of practice, and that practice draws its routines and ideals from organizations. Through his studies of lawyers in various firms, closely observed and sympathetically described, Kelly reveals how differently organizations adapt to the intense pressures of today's practice environment. His method of linking individual life-experiences to organizational strategies and the external constraints of competition and client demands infuses realism and richness into the concept of professionalism and makes this one of the most interesting and original books on professions and professionalism to appear in years."
—Robert W. Gordon, Yale Law School

"In his two volumes of Lives of Lawyers, Michael Kelly explores legal ethics in an unusual, and unusually rewarding, way. Rather than focusing on rules or arguments, Kelly looks at the kind of lives lawyers lead. Ethics, Socrates thought, is about how to live one's life, and Kelly takes the Socratic question to heart. He explores the institutions lawyers work in and the choices they make. He writes with intelligence, great insight, and above all with heart. This is a superb book."

—David Luban, Georgetown University

Michael J. Kelly is President and Chairman of the Board of the National Senior Citizens Law Center, an advocacy group for older Americans of limited means.

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cover of Lives of Lawyers: Journeys in the Organizations of Practice

Lives of Lawyers

Journeys in the Organizations of Practice

Michael Kelly

University of Michigan Press, 1994

America has long enjoyed a love/hate relationship with its attorneys; jokes equating lawyers with vermin abound at the same time that our love of litigation is reflected in a doubling of the ranks of lawyers since the 1960s. Though we often see the lawyer as a crusading lone wolf of justice, the illuminating Lives of Lawyers demonstrates that the integrity of individual lawyers is fundamentally influenced by the nature of the legal organizations that have come to dominate the field. In fleshing out these agencies of legal expertise, Kelly offers important insights into the personal ideals of lawyers, the struggle to clarify professionalism as interpreted by the legal origination, and the effects of these factors on society's perceptions of law and lawyering.
Lives of Lawyers paints an intimate portrait of five legal entities: two corporate firms, an in-house corporate counsel's office, and a public interest agency. Each is viewed through a kaleidoscope of client/colleague relationships, connections to civic and community life, income levels and career satisfaction of attorneys, the social status of the organization, and the character of the particular law practiced. These detailed portrayals vividly reveal the diversity inherent to the profession and the wealth of responses to the question of what shapes the values of today's legal practices. The author's deft use of narrative and debt to the discipline of biography and sociology make his five stores a first-rate read.
Kelly gets into the trenches with lawyers comprising these organizations; they don't mince words in passing judgment on themselves, their employers, or the state of the profession--particularly its growing commercialism. Nonetheless, Lives of Lawyers reminds us of the constantly renewed dedication by lawyers to the principles of legal professionalism.
Michael J. Kelly is University Vice President and Professor of Law, Georgetown University.
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cover of Reconstructing Justice: An Agenda for Trial Reform

Reconstructing Justice

An Agenda for Trial Reform

Franklin Strier

University of Chicago Press, 1996

In Reconstructing Justice, Franklin Strier doesn't simply describe problems with the American trial system; he proposes reforms. Arguing that lawyers need to share more power with the judge and jury, Strier recommends ways we can retain and improve our basic adversarial system. He suggests we eliminate peremptory challenges, give judges the authority to ask questions of witnesses, and limit the number of expert witnesses. Drawing from a wide variety of sources, including case histories, scholarly works, Blackstone's Commentaries, and The Federalist Papers, he argues that judicial reform is not only possible, but—because of the increased public coverage of trials and understanding of the need for reform—inevitable.

Franklin Strier brings this critical look at trial reform up to date with a new preface in which he discusses how the inordinate amount of public attention of the O. J. Simpson trial, and the power the attorneys had over the court in that case, shed new light on the trial system's weaknesses and inequities.

"Anyone with an interest in courtroom trials will be fascinated by Strier's analysis of the game of law and suggestions for reforming the trail system to provide justice in a greater number of cases. . . . Highly recommended."—Choice
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cover of The Consciousness of the Litigator

The Consciousness of the Litigator

Duffy Graham

University of Michigan Press, 2005

"An important and thought-provoking addition to the literature on the ethics of lawyers."
---Kimberly Kirkland, Franklin Pierce Law Center

The Consciousness of the Litigator investigates the role of the lawyer in modern American political and social life and in the judicial process, and plumbs lawyers' perceptions of themselves, their work, and, especially, their sense of right and wrong.

In so doing, the book sheds light on the unique and little-examined subject of the moral mind of the litigator, whose work extends to all corners of society and whose primary expertise---making legal arguments---is the fundamental skill of all lawyers.

The Consciousness of the Litigator stands with Michael Kelly's Lives of Lawyers as a must-read for the many law students, scholars, and practicing litigators who struggle to balance ethical questions with the dictates of their highly commercialized profession.
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