Professionalism Paradigm Shift: Why Discarding Professional Ideology Will Improve the Conduct and Reputation of the Bar, The (original) (raw)
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1995
The Article explains how the Professionalism Paradigm distinguishes between self-interested businesspersons and altruistic professionals who place the public good above their own interests and those of their clients. The legal profession has used this Business-Profession dichotomy to obtain control of the delivery legal services, including a legislative monopoly on the practice of law. Today, the Professionalism Paradigm faces a crisis as leading lawyers, judges, and scholars complain that law has become a business and is no longer a profession. The Article “identifies this shift as a time for hope rather than as a cause for despair. Applying Thomas S. Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts, Professor Pearce traces the transformation of law practice from a profession to a business. Explaining that the crisis created by the proliferation of business activities in law practice cannot be reconciled with the Professionalism Paradigm, he predicts that a Business Paradigm is emerging. Profe...
Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics , 1996
Many lawyers in this country think of themselves as members of a noble and learned profession, whose history and culture are marked by great deeds and high ideals. This picture is accurate enough, at least insofar as it goes, but it has little to do with what most lawyers do - or have done - most of the time. Perhaps that is why others have viewed us in a different light. The most fair-minded of our critics are curious about the causes of the profession's apparent decline; others have already passed judgment, inviting us only to exercise the profession's corporate right of allocation. If society now holds the legal profession in low esteem, one view suggests, at least society now has the legal profession that it deserves. But that is small comfort to anyone. Fortunately, a prominent lawyer and two experienced law teachers have recently tried their hands at describing and analyzing the causes of the malaise that now seemingly demoralizes all parts of the legal profession. There is much to be gained from their insights. Part Two of this Essay will consider the views of Sol Linowitz, a practitioner who believes that the decline of the legal profession is largely attributable to the loss of a sense of professionalism among the members of the practicing bar. Part Three will consider the views of Mary Ann Glendon, a scholar who perceives a shift in the legal role from "craft" to "social instrumentality" as a central problem. Part Four will examine the views of Anthony Kronman, a scholar who sees the problem in terms of a narrowing of the lawyer's role. In Part Five, we shall consider some commonalities among these disparate approaches, as well as some further areas of possible inquiry.
Ideologies of Professionalism and the Politics of Self-Regulation in the California State Bar
1995
This Article is a case study of the California State Bar lawyer discipline system in crisis. The Bar's lawyer discipline system is the official state mechanism for regulating the professional conduct of California's more than 100,000 lawyers. The State Bar in California self-regulates as an adjunct of the judicial branch of government. The State Bar operates in this capacity as
Lawyers’ Professional Independence: Overrated or Undervalued?
Social Science Research Network, 2013
This article explores the concept of lawyers’ "professional independence" in the literature of the U.S. legal profession. It begins with some reflections on the conventional meanings of professional independence, which encompasses both the bar’s collective independence to regulate its members and individual lawyers’ independence in the context of professional representations, including independence from clients, on one hand, and independence from third parties, on the other. The article suggests that the professional conduct rules are overly preoccupied with protecting lawyers’ professional independence from the corrupting influences of other professionals. The article then turns to an aspect of professional independence that has largely dropped out of lawyers’ discourse but that deserves more attention, namely, lawyers’ independence from the courts. This includes: (1) freedom to criticize judges; (2) freedom to disobey arguably unlawful court orders; and (3) freedom to re...