Category Archives: Legal Profession

The Life of the Law Cannot Be Coded

Jun 4, 2018 Rebecca RoipheLegal Profession

Rebecca Roiphe

It’s funny that people who are so infinitely fallible consistently seek to eliminate that fallibility—to get rid of the vagaries, inconsistencies, and unpredictable nature of human decision-making. In this insightful article, Frank Pasquale exposes a recent incarnation of this effort and its effect on the future of the legal profession.  Legal futurists insist that software and new technology can edge out lawyers with a better, more efficient, and more consistent product. There is little that lawyers do that cannot be done better by artificial intelligence, smart contracts, and other block chain technologies. Governance itself will be more efficient, fair, and even-handed if we minimize the human element. Pasquale guides us through the flaws in the argument, the dangers and unintended consequences of the unbridled use of these tools. In doing so, he argues that legal futurists ignore the irreducibly human and discretionary nature of the law and he concludes with a more modest future for technology in the law.

Pasquale begins by exploring and debunking several myths about law and technology.  Promotors of the new legal technology suggest that the products can eliminate human discretion. Part of the appeal of legal automation is that it can replace bias with fairness and human error with mathematical precision. The more social scientists teach us about how bias works, the more skeptical we become about the ability of well-trained individuals to make good decisions. But this goal is illusory. Technology does not remove human choice. It merely shifts responsibility from lawyers, judges, and regulators to programmers.  In doing so it hides the human choices that are equally plagued by error and bias under the guise of neutrality and objectivity. It shifts decisions from those trained in law to those in a different discipline. Continue reading "The Life of the Law Cannot Be Coded"

Minding the Gap: Access to Justice Over the Years

May 2, 2018 Nora Freeman EngstromLegal Profession

Nora Freeman Engstrom

In Access to Justice: Looking Back, Thinking Ahead, Deborah L. Rhode and Scott Cummings—two giants in the field—take stock of where we are when it comes to access to civil justice in the United States. Not content merely to offer an anodyne retrospective, they then use the opportunity to outline a bold agenda for future progress.

Rhode and Cummings begin their inquiry by assessing the scope of the problem. But, in so doing, they confront the same dismal paucity of reliable data that’s afflicted this inquiry for decades. As Rebecca Sandefur has bluntly put it: “[A]t present, we have no idea of the actual volume of legal need, and no idea of the actual volume of unmet legal need.” While the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) reports that “over four-fifths of the legal needs of the poor remain unmet,” it is hard to know whether that is true, as even identifying what a “legal need” is or isn’t is surprisingly difficult. (P. 487.) Many situations raise legal issues, have legal consequences, or pose legal risks, but how do we know whether any given situation is one of true legal need that can only be handled by someone with bona fide legal expertise? Worse, how do we assess those situations based on lay people’s sometimes hazy recollections, often long after the fact? Continue reading "Minding the Gap: Access to Justice Over the Years"

A Portrait of Uninsured Lawyers: Using Empirical Data to Enhance Public Protection

Mar 30, 2018 Susan FortneyLegal Profession

Susan Fortney

Many professors reading this review teach professional responsibility courses. These courses cover the law of lawyering, commonly focusing on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. As revealed in a small survey that I conducted in 2011, many professors do not devote much attention to studying legal malpractice law. The survey revealed that an even smaller percentage cover legal malpractice insurance. As a result, the majority of law students likely graduate without the basic understanding of legal malpractice insurance and without considering the crucial role that insurance plays in a professional’s practice. Professors’ failure to discuss the role insurance plays in helping lawyers function as accountable professionals may contribute to the large number of lawyers who fail to carry legal malpractice insurance.¹ From the standpoint of access to justice, uninsured lawyers may leave injured persons without a remedy because experienced malpractice counsel often decline to sue lawyers who do not carry insurance or have significant assets to cover a malpractice judgment or settlement.²

Among practice settings, solo practitioners constitute the largest group of uninsured lawyers. Although some scholars have studied the role that insurance plays in affecting the conduct of lawyers in large firms,³ no one has studied the issues related to malpractice insurance and solo practice. That is why I especially liked Lawyers Going Bare and Clients Going Blind by Leslie C. Levin. The article provides a fascinating window into the world of uninsured solo lawyers. Continue reading "A Portrait of Uninsured Lawyers: Using Empirical Data to Enhance Public Protection"

Making Sense of the Fee-Splitting Rule

Feb 27, 2018 W. Bradley WendelLegal Profession

W. Bradley Wendel

The humble fee-splitting rule—Rule 5.4(a) of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and its substantial equivalents in various states—plays an outsized role in structuring the delivery of legal services in the United States. The rule provides that, with limited exceptions, “[a] lawyer or law firm shall not share legal fees with a nonlawyer.” The fee-splitting rule is substantially the same even in jurisdictions with quirky rules of professional conduct, such as California, New York, and Texas. The only exception is the District of Columbia. Historically the concern of the fee-splitting rule was mostly payments to nonlawyers for referrals of cases, or the use of “runners” or “cappers” to solicit personal-injury clients. It featured prominently, however, in the debate in the early 2000’s over the proposal to allow multidisciplinary practices (MDPs), such as partnerships between accountants and lawyers. The acrimonious MDP debate ended with lawyers doubling down on the claim that the practice of law is a profession, not a mere business, and that avoiding the sharing of fees with nonlawyers is an essential firewall protecting lawyer professionalism. (Insert snark here about how an industry with total revenues of $86.7 billion—the 2017 AmLaw 100—can claim with a straight face not to be a “business.”)

Tony Sebok’s article, Selling Attorneys’ Fees, begins on familiar ground. The inability of law firms to obtain equity investments from nonlawyers limits their sources of capital to firm revenues and debt financing. This leaves them strapped for the cash that might catalyze Silicon-Valley-style innovation in the delivery of legal services and makes them vulnerable to economic downturns. One of the motivations for the ABA’s Ethics 20/20 Commission was to consider whether regulatory innovations might enhance the delivery of affordable legal services. However, the proposal to permit certain types of alternative business structures, which would have required relaxing the fee-splitting rule, went down in flames. The Illinois Bar Association filed a formal resolution opposing changes to the fee-splitting rule, and the Ethics 20/20 Commission responded by tabling any consideration of alternative business structures.¹ Continue reading "Making Sense of the Fee-Splitting Rule"

Framing a “Gatekeeper of Justice Whistleblowing Obligation”

Jan 17, 2018 Francesca BartlettLegal Profession

Francesca Bartlett

In Lawyers, Confidentiality and Whistleblowing, Christine Parker, Suzanne Le Mire and Anita MacKay make a case for a “gatekeeper of justice whistleblowing obligation” based upon the special relationship of lawyers to their clients and to the law:

… lawyers hold special appeal as potential whistleblowers. They are trained and able to spot illegality and abuses of the justice system. Their duty to the administration of justice and to the court is considered to be paramount; prioritised over the duty to their client. This duty could place a responsibility on the lawyer to respond to, prevent or perhaps expose misconduct that affects the administration of justice. (Pp. 1010-11.)

Having established the obligation, they propose a model for deciding when and how to whistleblow, which contains three “ethical touchstones” to be considered:

First, the relationship between the lawyer whistleblower and the wrongdoer. Secondly, the type of wrongdoing to be disclosed. Finally, the process adopted by a lawyer whistleblower faced with misconduct… (P. 1016.) Continue reading "Framing a “Gatekeeper of Justice Whistleblowing Obligation”"

Against Babbitry: What Legal History and Practical Leadership can Tell us about Lawyers’ Ethics

Oct 10, 2017 Richard MoorheadLegal Profession

Richard Moorhead

Reading Robert W. Gordon’s Essay The Return of the Lawyer-Statesman? on Ben W. Heineman Jr.’s book, The Inside Counsel Revolution (an introduction and link to the book can be found here) reminded me of three virtues. One is of the review essay, the ability to luxuriate in another’s work and allow it to be seen through one’s own ideas. This is something I confess I have never attempted, fearing the reflex to critique or the urge to self-publicize would surface too strongly. The second is of the need to return to familiar but central ideas. Gordon has written on the themes in this essay many times before (see for example, Corporate Law Practice as a Public Calling and A New Role for Lawyers: The Corporate Counselor after Enron). His arguments are the more elegant for it and, importantly, our reading of Heineman is more rewarding too. But the third is the one that struck me most forcefully, which is the wisdom to be gained from well-told legal history.

The central virtue of Gordon’s essay is the historical contextualization of Heineman’ book. Gordon gives us a taut, rich, and informative narrative on the importance of political context. In seeking to answer whether General Counsel can be both [business] partner and [public] guardian as Heineman puts it, we are reminded how we have been here before: the tensions in the General Counsel role—and their currently high status in corporate affairs – are not peculiarly modern. Most importantly we also see how lawyers’ ethics are shaped by far larger forces than law schools and bar associations. So the influence of inter-war industrial relations, Reagonomics, the politics of corporate leaders, and latter day skepticism of the corporation post-financial crash may all play a role. Continue reading "Against Babbitry: What Legal History and Practical Leadership can Tell us about Lawyers’ Ethics"

Politicizing the Bar Exam 

Sep 12, 2017 Sida LiuLegal Profession

Sida Liu

The bar exam has rarely been of great interest to legal scholars. Although its format and pass rate vary substantially across countries and jurisdictions, it is often dismissed as merely a qualifying exam aimed at “controlling the production of producers,” as Richard L. Abel argues in his seminal book American Lawyers. Even in Japan, where the bar exam pass rate used to be as low as 2-3%, most discussions contemplating reform have focused on whether or not it is desirable to increase the number of lawyers. Although many law professors have taken the exam—and some, famously, have flunked it—there seems to be little scholarly interest in understanding its content.

This is why Rachel E. Stern’s new study on how China politicized its bar exam is both refreshing and insightful. In the process of researching Chinese law, Stern keenly observed a phenomenon that most other researchers took for granted. In particular, over the past decade, a number of “political questions” have been inserted into the National Judicial Examination—China’s unified bar exam for judges, procurators, and lawyers. These questions are not aimed at testing the test-takers’ legal knowledge or technical expertise but, rather, their understanding of the “socialist rule of law and the correct role of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)” (P. 507), which are only remotely related to legal issues or the structure of the legal system. Although the political questions account for merely a small percentage of all exam questions, given the exam’s relatively low pass rate (only 11% in 2013), most test-takers still take them seriously. Continue reading "Politicizing the Bar Exam "

Just Confidentiality

Jul 28, 2017 Eli WaldLegal Profession

Eli Wald

In a concise and elegant essay, titled Attorney-Client Confidentiality: A Critical Analysis, William H. Simon offers a compelling justice-based critique of the doctrine of confidentiality. Defined broadly to encompass all “information related to the representation” of a client, the traditional doctrine, dubbed by Simon “strong” confidentiality (p. 1), forbids disclosure unless narrow exceptions apply (see Rule 1.6). Challenging both the expanse of the doctrine and its categorical posture, Simon instead advances what he calls “moderate confidentiality”—a duty that would “mandate preservation of confidentiality except where disclosure is clearly necessary to avert substantial injustice.” As Simon explains:

The moderate duty is sensitive to context and demands complex judgment on the part of the lawyer. In every case where confidentiality threatens to work injustice, the lawyer must weigh the value of client loyalty against the competing harm disclosure would avert. By contrast, the strong confidentiality of current doctrine is more categorical in form and seems designed to minimize judgment. Once there is a presumptively confidential communication, the lawyer is directed to consult a list of exceptions. If there is no relevant exception, confidentiality prevails over competing considerations, no matter how weighty they are. (P. 2.)

In so doing, Simon first rejects the two common justifications for strong confidentiality: the notion that strong confidentiality is needed to foster trust in the attorney-client relationship, which in turn makes the representation more effective, and the vindication of law and legal rights. Both justifications are codified in comment 2 to Rule 1.6. The comment reads in relevant part, “[confidentiality] contributes to the trust that is the hallmark of the client-lawyer relationship. The client is thereby encouraged to seek legal assistance and to communicate fully and frankly with the lawyer even as to embarrassing or legally damaging subject matter. The lawyer needs this information to represent the client effectively,” and adds that “[a]lmost without exception, clients come to lawyers in order to determine their rights and what is, in the complex of laws and regulations, deemed to be legal and correct.” (Rule 1.6, cmt 2.) Continue reading "Just Confidentiality"

Looking For Competencies in all of the Right Places

Jul 15, 2017 Laurel TerryLegal Profession

Laurel Terry

Few people would say that U.S. legal education is doing an absolutely perfect job. While there have been a number of different criticisms and reform proposals over the past thirty years, some common themes have emerged. One theme is that students are not equipped with the range of skills they need to help clients address multi-faceted issues in an interdisciplinary world.  Additional themes are found in the influential 2007 Carnegie Foundation report. Summarizing this report, one coauthor explained that legal education has generally done a good job with respect to the “first apprenticeship,” which is the “cognitive apprenticeship” of teaching students to think like a lawyer; that legal education has made modest improvements with respect to the “second apprenticeship” which involves skills and practice; and that legal education has done a poor job with respect to the “third apprenticeship,” which involves professional identity and values.

One recent article that addresses these legal education gaps is Neil Hamilton and Jerry Organ’s “Thirty Reflection Questions” article. Thirty Reflection Questions begins by discussing the concept of “learning outcomes,” including learning outcomes related to professional identity and values. This article cites the definition of learning outcomes found in a 2015 ABA accreditation Guidance Memo: “Learning outcomes must consist of clear and concise statements of knowledge that students are expected to acquire, skills students are expected to develop, and values that they are expected to understand and integrate into their professional lives.” For those who have not paid particularly close attention to the ABA Council’s relatively new Standard 302, the interpretative Guidance Memo, or the related literature, Part I of the article provides a very useful overview of the learning outcomes accreditation requirement and the rationale that lies behind it. Part II discusses how a law school curriculum can be designed in order to foster learning outcomes related to professional identity, taking into account research from other fields and data about law student development.¹ Finally, Part III contains the thirty reflection questions referenced in the article’s title. This Part explains how a law school or faculty member can use the thirty questions to help law students obtain meaningful post-graduation employment, acquire the competencies that legal employers and clients want, and develop their professional identity.

I particularly like Part III because of the way that it links the topics of post- graduation employment, the “competencies” that legal employers want their new hires to possess, and professional identity formation. Part III explains how a law school or professor can use a law student’s interest in the first topic – his or her own employment outcome – as a way to foster development with respect to the other two outcomes. The authors explain that the breakthrough in their own thinking was when they decided to go where the students are and to recognize that virtually all students want post-graduation employment that is meaningful to them given their life experiences, talents and passions. (P. 876.) The reflection questions provide an “enlightened self-interest” entry point for students to proactively develop the competencies they need to serve clients and the legal system well and to develop their professional identity and a commitment to the legal system. Continue reading "Looking For Competencies in all of the Right Places"

Russia’s Lawyers: Russia and the US Through the Lens of the Legal Profession

Jun 12, 2017 Carole SilverLegal Profession

Carole Silver

The news about Russia’s interference in the U.S. election raises myriad questions for lawyers, including for students of the legal profession. For example, are Russia’s lawyers being trained in ways that position them to be complicit in President Putin’s increasing autocracy? Or is their education preparing them to challenge his control? Have they served as enabler or challenger in the past? Is there any reason to expect them to take a more activist role today? And generally, what explains the differences among nations in the ways lawyers pursue or forego action aimed at constraining governmental overreach and corruption?

These questions are among the topics explored by Kathryn Hendley in her work on the Russian legal profession and legal system. Hendley’s newest article, Evaluating the Prospects for Young Lawyers to Remake Putin’s Russia, considers whether a group of recent law graduates “might be willing to take on the regime in defense of civil society.” (P. 452.) Her focus on lawyers arises from the recognition that “[l]aw has played a critical role in this strangulation of civil society” in Russia, on one hand, and that “[i]n some other authoritarian polities, lawyers have taken the lead in holding authorities to account, often paying a heavy personal price for doing so.” (P.451.) Their use of law’s mechanisms to pursue justice “act as signals … [that] may evince a nascent civil society ….” (P. 451.) Continue reading "Russia’s Lawyers: Russia and the US Through the Lens of the Legal Profession"