A Modern Legal Ethics proposes a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. Daniel Markovits reinterprets the positive law governing lawyers to identify fidelity as its organizing ideal. Unlike ordinary loyalty, fidelity requires lawyers to repress their personal judgments concerning the truth and justice of their clients' claims. Next, the book asks what it is like--not psychologically but ethically--to practice law subject to the self-effacement that fidelity demands. Fidelity requires lawyers to lie and to cheat on behalf of their clients. However, an ethically profound interest in integrity gives lawyers reason to resist this characterization of their conduct. Any legal ethics adequate to the complexity of lawyers' lived experience must address the moral dilemmas immanent in this tension. The dominant approaches to legal ethics cannot. Finally, A Modern Legal Ethics reintegrates legal ethics into political philosophy in a fashion commensurate to lawyers' central place in political practice. Lawyerly fidelity supports the authority of adjudication and thus the broader project of political legitimacy. Throughout, the book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favor of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas. Moreover, because lawyers practice at the hinge of modern morals and politics, the book's interpretive insights identify--in an unusually pure and intense form--the moral and political conditions of all modernity.

Examining legal ethics within the framework of modern practice, this book identifies two important ethical issues that all lawyers confront: the difference between the role of lawyers and the role of judges in pursuing justice, and the conflicting responsibilities lawyers have to their clients and to the legal system more broadly. In addressing these issues, Legal Ethics provides an explanation of the duties and dilemmas common to practicing lawyers in modern legal systems throughout the world. The authors focus their analysis on lawyers in independent practice in modern capitalist constitutional regimes, including the United States, Japan, Europe, and Latin America, as well as the emerging legal systems in China and the former Soviet bloc, to develop connections between the legal profession and political systems based on the rule of law. They find that although ethical tension is inherent in the legal practice of all these societies, the legal profession is essential to stable political institutions.

"With guidelines on topics from ethics to office management, changes in payment technologies, managing client expectations, and gaining competence in new practice areas, this book will prepare you for lawyering in today's world and in tomorrow's"--

"As the legal profession undergoes structural changes, longstanding principles of ethics still govern the day-to-day lives of practicing lawyers. This new Hornbook on professional responsibility provides both a snapshot of ongoing systemic changes and a thorough examination of the fundamentals of lawyer and judicial ethics ... [This] Hornbook (1) begins with the changing environment in which legal services are provided in the modern economy; (2) continues with a theoretical grounding of legal ethics in moral philosophy; (3) offers empirical evidence and discussion about professional formation and moral development; (4) provides a comprehensive analysis of the law of lawyer ethics; (5) includes a ... discussion of the modern law of legal malpractice, and (6) concludes with exploration of the rules of judicial ethics."--

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

William Simon, a legal theorist with experience in practice, here argues that the profession's standard approach to questions of legal ethics is incoherent and implausible, insisting the critical weakness is the style of judgment.

Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) was a leading figure in the Neo-Kantian philosophical movement that dominated European thought before 1918. He is also the inaugural figure for what is meant by "modern Jewish philosophy" in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book explores Cohen’s striking claim that ethics is rooted in law – a claim developed in both his philosophical ethics and his philosophy of Judaism, in particular in his writings on "love-of-neighbor," up to and including his well-known Religion of Reason. Dana Hollander proposes that neither Cohen’s systematic philosophy nor his "Jewish" philosophy should be seen as the dominant framework for his oeuvre as a whole, but that his understanding of key philosophical questions takes shape in the passages between both corpuses, a trait that could be seen as paradigmatic for modern Jewish philosophy. Ethics Out of Law taps into one of the prime topics of current interest in the field of Jewish philosophy: the nature of Jewish political existence and the changing configurations of "law" that this entails.

This book aims to produce lawyers who can debate, criticise and change professional ethics as well as understand their underlying rationale. Written by the author of the leading work on the subject, The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales, this book is aimed at the undergraduate or postgraduate student taking a half or full course in the subject. The book is divided into four parts dealing with the professional and regulatory framework for delivering legal services, the obligations owed to clients, wider duties and responsibilities and practice settings. It sets out the important background to the modern practice of law, and explains the theoretical underpinning of professional ethics and its everyday application through conduct rules and principles. Extracts from legislation, cases and conduct rules are provided, and comparative issues are considered where relevant. The book is also interactive, raising issues and posing questions that will encourage students to engage with the material as they read, which will also be helpful for classroom discussion.

More than a discussion of professional regulation, this treatise addresses issues that every lawyer faces, such as conflict of interest, the client-lawyer relationship and confidentiality. In addition, specialized concerns are examined, including the role and responsibilities of lawyers as house counsel, government attorneys, mediators, prosecutors, and participants in the political process. This comprehensive survey also covers lawyer advertising, pro bono work, lawyer competence and other topics of modern practice. An entire chapter of this valuable reference is devoted to judges and the Judicial Code. Westlaw® queries are included.

Daniel Markovits proposes here a wholesale renovation of legal ethics, one that contributes to ethical thought generally. His book rejects the casuistry that dominates contemporary applied ethics in favour of an interpretive method that may be mimicked in other areas.