This detailed portrait of American lawyers traces their efforts to professionalize during the last 100 years by erecting barriers to control the quality and quantity of entrants. Abel describes the rise and fall of restrictive practices that dampened competition among lawyers and with outsiders. He shows how lawyers simultaneously sought to increase access to justice while stimulating demand for services, and their efforts to regulate themselves while forestalling external control. Data on income and status illuminate the success of these efforts. Charting the dramatic transformation of the profession over the last two decades, Abel documents the growing number and importance of lawyers employed outside private practice (in business and government, as judges and teachers) and the displacement of corporate clients they serve. Noting the complexity of matching ever more diverse entrants with more stratified roles, he depicts the mechanism that law schools and employers have created to allocate graduates to jobs and socialize them within their new environments. Abel concludes with critical reflections on possible and desirable futures for the legal profession.

Among all those who encounter the law in the conduct of their lives or who consider it as a career, few have a solid understanding of the legal profession in America, and fewer still know anything about systems in other parts of the world. Lawyers in Society offers a concise comparative introduction to the practice of law in a number of countries: England, Germany, Japan, Venezuela, and Belgium. Extracted from the editors' three highly successful volumes Lawyers in Society, these essays guide readers through the differing worlds of civil and common law, law in Europe and Asia, and first and third world legal systems. One contribution addresses the changing role of women in the profession--women comprise half of all new lawyers in most countries--and the changes they are bringing. A new introduction and concluding essay reflect on the place of this volume in current and future research.

People need lawyers for many things, including tax and immigration advice, drafting contracts, preparing wills, buying and selling houses, forming and dissolving companies, and representation and advice during divorce, probate, personal injury and criminal charges. But many people do not trust lawyers. With good reason, they fear that lawyers will neglect or overcharge them, betray them out of self-interest or on behalf of others, or obstruct the pursuit of justice out of overzealousness. Although the legal profession drafts ethical rules, law schools teach those rules, the bar exam tests lawyers' knowledge, and disciplinary bodies enforce them, we know that violations by lawyers are all too common. Lawyers on Trial: Understanding Ethical Misconduct by California Attorneys, by Richard L. Abel, presents six dramatic accounts of California lawyers who betrayed their clients and the legal system. Through the detailed records of the disciplinary proceedings, it examines some of the most common complaints about lawyers: chasing ambulances, charging excessive fees, violating conflict of interest rules, and displaying excessive zeal. These complex and compelling dramas serve to make the ethical rules, and the temptations they seek to curb, come vividly alive for law students, lawyers, those thinking of becoming lawyers, anyone who has been or might some day be a client, and the general public. The lessons to be drawn from these situations can help the legal profession and the public devise better strategies for ensuring that lawyers abide by the rules.

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.

Foundational socio-legal study of lawyers in solo and small practice in Chicago in the 1950s and early 1960s, updated with later contributions from 1994 and 2011. Jerome Carlin's LAWYERS ON THEIR OWN is a recognized, foundational study of lawyers in individual practice in an urban setting. It became the template for an important form of social science research into lawyers in solo practice. The first extensive and grounded study of individual practitioners and their candid quotes in interviews, Carlin's book exposed the unique practices, class divides, ethical dilemmas and ultimate resentments of a little-viewed subgroup of attorneys and their clients. This book's findings and research methodology influenced many such studies of attorneys in action that followed it. The author's succinct and supported writing has proved to be an enduring and important study in this field of socio-legal research. Updated with the author's extensive introduction to the second edition, as well as a new foreword by law professor William Gallagher, this modern republication is presented to a new generation of readers and researchers into the daily lives, work, business angles and unique challenges of solo and individual-client law practice. Quality ebook formatting from Quid Pro Books includes linked notes, active Contents, legible tables and graphs, and careful proofreading. In addition, this ebook (and the new edition in paperback) embeds the original pagination from prior editions so that the reader, even of digital formats, has continuity in research, referencing, and classroom assignments.