idealawg

The legal profession is changing, but how?

High salaries and prestige, training and loyalty, alternatives to traditional law firms, and generational differences are just a few of the topics addressed in  "Junior Associate Woes - The State of the Legal Profession, Part 2" (FindLaw), an article reporting on a symposium held last month at Stanford Law. Although I urge you the read the article in its entirety, below are a few excerpts I found most provocative of thought.

"Young lawyers want to work at home in their pajamas, looking at their fish tanks and listening to their iPods," said Gordon Davidson, Partner and Chairman, Fenwick & West LLP. Although his statement is tongue-in-cheek, it captures the "play ethic" embodied in younger generations.
. . .
According to some lawyers who post on FindLaw's Greedy Associates, the current state of the profession is so unfulfilling that there is a distinct career path for attorneys, from "BigLaw through to non-legal employment." Essentially, the professional life of an attorney is a progression from money to self-fulfillment.

. . ."The law firm that cracks the lifestyle

"I am just trying to save the world": How would you identify a toxic mediator?

I am writing an article on the legal profession's version of the helper syndrome. This syndrome results in a person helping others in order to ease his or her own pain or to ignore his or her own problems. Because of the lack of clarity or self-awareness on the part of the "helper," the results of the helping intervention can often be worse than nothing at all. The service professions frequently attract people who exhibit the helper syndrome. Even for the mentally healthy, the service relationship can be tricky.

A major consideration, and one that should be held steadfastly in the back of every professional's mind, is that the helping relationship is typically asymmetric: people are not on equal footing. Asymmetric relationships bring with them many potential problems, including dependence, resentment, and suspicion. A key antidote to those perils is the client or helpee maintaining autonomy and self-determination in as large a measure as appropriate and possible.

Another key is well-placed trust in the professional. Gerard Lulofs* writes:

[T]he professions are separate from other vocations because they require a relatively high level of systematic theoretical knowledge. This brings with it a market imbalance, because the information at the disposal of the exchange partners is asymmetrically distributed. . . . As a rule, it is the supplier who determines the needs of the recipient, whereas the latter is seldom in a position to assess the quality of the services provided. The most prominent characteristic, therefore, of the professional services market lies in the element of trust contained in the exchange relationship between provider and recipient.

Still another key to effective service relationships, perhaps the most essential, is the professional's mental

"Moyer to lawyers: Fight foreclosure for free" [using mediation]

Excerpt:

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, a Sandusky native, knows home foreclosures are a big problem back home in Erie County and across Ohio.

Moyer is asking the courts and Ohio attorneys to reach out and help as many homeowners as they can.

The chief justice has asked judges who handle foreclosure cases to use mediation to resolve as many cases as possible.

And he's asked Ohio lawyers to volunteer in foreclosure cases to help families who can't otherwise afford a lawyer.

Click to read the rest of "Moyer to lawyers: Fight foreclosure for free."

The Lawyer's Commandments by Eduardo Juan Couture

These ten wise commandments for lawyers were written by Eduardo Juan Couture and translated by James A. Diaz.

The Lawyer's Commandments

I. Study: The law is changing constantly. If you do not follow in its footsteps, each day you will be a lawyer less and less.

II. Think: The law is learned by studying, but it is practiced by thinking.

III. Work: The law is an arduous battle placed at the service of justice.

IV. Strive: Your duty is to strive for the law, but the day you find conflict between law and justice, strive for justice.

V. Be Loyal: Loyal to your client whom you should never abandon even when you learn he or she is not worthy of you; loyal to your adversaries even when they are disloyal to you; loyal to the judge, who is not knowledgeable of the facts and must rely on what you tell him or her, and, as to the law, every now and then must rely on what you advocate.

The last 5 commandments are here or here. (Hat tip for the second link to Law Is Cool.)

On an aligned note, here is A Physician's Affirmation by Dr. Fredrick Ralph Abrams (a wonderful man with whom I have had the pleasure of talking on several occasions).

Susan Cartier Liebel deserves a standing ovation for Blawg Review #142

Susan adds a great contribution to the blogosphere in two ways. First, Blawg Review #142 is a wise letter to a new lawyer. Second, she very cleverly intersperses the names of many blogs in her advice, thus making the letter a Blawg Review. I had much fun being surprised each time I clicked through to a blog to see what post Susan had chosen for linking.

Susan introduces her masterpiece:

This Blawg Review is designed as a Letter to New Lawyer.  I've incorporated the interesting names of many legal blogs as part of the narrative but you will have no clue what the topic of each blog post is until you click on the link.  Hopefully you will have fun discovering each blog post.  I've included some of the well-known and prolific usual suspects and am introducing you to some new and exciting blogs I've recently discovered.  There may even be other Letters to a New Lawyer you will uncover. So, enjoy!

You will enjoy! Bravo, Susan!

Educating the new professionals: "In but not of" the legal institution

Change magazine published "A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited" by Parker J. Palmer. In this article, Palmer looks at how to educate the new professional and he defines that professional as

a person who is not only competent in his or her discipline but has the skill and the will to deal with the institutional pathologies that threaten the profession's highest standards.

He distinguishes between professions and their institutions.

[T]he functions of a profession are not necessarily those of the institutional structures that house it. The fact that we have schools does not mean we have education. The fact that we have hospitals does not mean we have health care. The fact that we have courts does not mean we have justice. We need professionals who are "in but not of" their institutions, whose allegiance to the core values of their fields makes them resist the institutional diminishment of those values.

I find that paragraph to be very provocative of thought. How about you?

Parker then asks,

How might we prepare students to be teachers, lawyers, physicians, and clergy—to say nothing of parents and neighbors and citizens—who can help transform the institutions that dominate our lives?

He makes five proposals which I will list here. I urge you to read the article for fuller explanation of what he is recommending by each of these five.

• (1) We must help our students uncover, examine, and debunk the myth that institutions are external to and constrain us, as if they possessed powers that render us helpless—an assumption that is largely unconscious and wholly untrue.
• (2) We must take our students' emotions as seriously as we take their intellects.

Dr. Rama Mani: Her inspiring speech about peace and artistry

"Be an instrument of peace," an article in Sri Lanka's The Sunday Times, includes excerpts from a speech delivered at Trinity College in London by Dr. Rama Mani on "The responsibility of an artist in a turbulent world." The article is beautiful and I urge you to read it in its entirety. Here's one excerpt I particularly like in which she talks about artists' responsibilities:

First to yourselves

You have a responsibility to remain true to this gift that Trinity, in its impeccable long standing tradition, has helped you to develop to a high degree of perfection. You owe it to yourselves and to your family and society around you to respect this gift that you were born with and have worked so hard to hone, and to use it always with creativity and with passion. Always know whatever the path of your lives, that you have already crafted the best tool to cope with life’s greatest challenges, the best method of emerging from each personal crisis you might face or see your friends, your company face, you can turn to your gift of music, theatre or other art form and find a creative solution.

Second to communities and countries

Conference later this month: Lawyers As Peacemakers, Lawyers as Problemsolvers

Lawyers As Peacemakers, Lawyers as Problemsolvers will be held Sunday, October 28, 2007 and
Monday, October 29, 2007, in Memphis Tennessee. From the conference brochure (PDF) . . .

According to the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, a “new conception of law practice” and of what it means to be a lawyer is taking hold within the legal profession. The legal academy and the legal profession are considering innovative approaches to the practice of law-including diverse paths such as collaborative law, restorative justice, therapeutic jurisprudence, transformative mediation, holistic law, and problem-solving courts. These opportunities offer attorneys broader dimensions in pursuing their professional responsibilities in client counseling and advocacy, conflict resolution and the promotion of social justice.

National speakers are . . .

Upcoming conference in November: Law as a Healing Profession

The Law as a Healing Profession conference will be held Sunday, November 4, 2007 and Monday, November 5, 2007 at Touro College Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in Central Islip, New York.

From the conference brochure (PDF) . . .

The inspiration for this Conference was Touro law professor Marjorie Silver’s
anthology, The Affective Assistance of Counsel: Practicing Law as a Healing Profession:

This book is subversive. It aims to undermine the legal profession’s prevailing gladiatorial paradigm. It is, to use Professor Leonard Riskin’s phrase, something off “the lawyer’s standard philosophical map.” It promises a vision of practicing law that is very different than that taught in most American law schools.

There exists tremendous discontent among the practicing bar. Many lawyers have found themselves unhappy or unfulfilled in their practices. Compared to other professionals, lawyers suffer disproportionately from excessive stress, substance abuse, and other emotional difficulties. Many find themselves demoralized or disillusioned about the practice of law.

Here’s the good news.

Humanizing Legal Education Symposium-Washburn University School of Law

From the Humanizing Legal Education Symposium Web site . . .

Washburn University School of Law, the editors of the Washburn Law Journal and the Symposium Planning Committee are pleased to host Humanizing Legal Education, a symposium/conference. Humanizing Legal Education, now a section of the American Association of Law Schools called "Balance in Legal Education," is a movement that responds to recent studies suggesting that legal education, at least at some law schools, adversely affects law students in disturbing ways. Presenters and conference attendees will explore the likely causes of the problem and ideas for improving law students' law school experiences.

. . . More than 30 speakers will be presenting their ideas, including the national leaders in the field: Larry Krieger, Susan Daicoff, Barbara Glesner-Fines, Gerald Hess, Bruce Winick, Paula Lustbader and Daisy Hurst-Floyd.

Sessions include . . .

• Plenary: "Empirical Insights on the 'Why' and 'How' of Humanizing Legal Education" [By one of the gurus and leaders of the humanizing legal education movement Professor Lawrence S. Krieger]
• Law Student and Lawyer Happiness
• Integration and Peer Bullying in Law School
• Responding to Specific Student Stressors: Maintaining Scholarships and Students with Disabilities
• Psychology and Student Well-Being
• Stressors and Stress Intervention
• Neuroscience and Multiple Intelligences
• Focus on the Well-Being of Today's Students (Two of the three workshops under this session topic focus on the millennial student)
• Plenary: "You Are Not in Kansas Anymore: How Law School Orientation Programs Can Help Students Fly Over the Rainbow" [By Professor Paula Lustbader]
• Courses, Teaching Methods, Curriculum and Student Needs
• Plenary: "The Comprehensive Law Movement and its Relation to Humanizing Legal Education" [By Professor Susan Daicoff, author of author of Lawyer Know Thyself: A Psychological Analysis of Personality Strengths and Weaknesses, on my list of recommended books in the left side bar]
• Students, Service Learning and the Comprehensive Law Movement

Looks like attendees will spend a very busy and productive couple of days. There is no conference fee and many of the meals are provided. Space is limited and only a few slots remain. If you are interested, sign up right away to secure one of the slots.