These are perilous times for Americans who need access to the legal system. Too many lawyers blatantly abuse power and trust, engage in reckless ethical misconduct, grossly unjust billing practices, and dishonesty disguised as client protection. All this has undermined the credibility of lawyers and the authority of the legal system. In the court of public opinion, many lawyers these days are guiltier than the criminals or giant corporations they defend. Is the public right? In this eye-opening, incisive book, Richard Zitrin and Carol Langford, two practicing lawyers and distinguished law professors, shine a penetrating light on the question everyone is asking: Why do lawyers behave the way they do? All across the country, lawyers view certain behavior as "ethical" while average citizens judge that same conduct "immoral." Now, with expert analysis of actual cases ranging from murder to class action suits, Zitrin and Langford investigate lawyers' behavior and its impact on our legal system. The result is a stunningly clear-eyed exploration of law as it is practiced in America today--and a cogent, groundbreaking program for legal reform.

While new law school graduates are pretty well versed in black letter law, they often lack the interpersonal and psychological skills that are imperative to a successful legal career. This book challenges the new lawyer to view themselves through the lens of their colleagues and clients and also to be aware of the basic behavioral norms that are the basis of a successful practice.

Can the law promote moral values even in pluralistic societies such as the United States? Drawing upon important federal legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, legal scholar and moral theologian Cathleen Kaveny argues that it can. In conversation with thinkers as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Pope John Paul II, and Joseph Raz, she argues that the law rightly promotes the values of autonomy and solidarity. At the same time, she cautions that wise lawmakers will not enact mandates that are too far out of step with the lived moral values of the actual community. According to Kaveny, the law is best understood as a moral teacher encouraging people to act virtuously, rather than a police officer requiring them to do so. In Law’s Virtues Kaveny expertly applies this theoretical framework to the controversial moral-legal issues of abortion, genetics, and euthanasia. In addition, she proposes a moral analysis of the act of voting, in dialogue with the election guides issued by the US bishops. Moving beyond the culture wars, this bold and provocative volume proposes a vision of the relationship of law and morality that is realistic without being relativistic and optimistic without being utopian.

REPRESENTING PEOPLE AGAINST POWER Internationally known legal ethics professor Richard Zitrin's work as a trial lawyer placed him on the front lines of fighting systemic racism, pervasive elitism, and injustice against individuals in the legal system. In Trial Lawyer, he shares details of the most compelling cases he's encountered and exposes the dilemmas he faced throughout his one-of-a-kind career. The profound, the consequential, the shocking, the bizarre, and even the humorous, Trial Lawyer brings to life what it means to represent people against power. From his first case as a young law student on the famous and highly politicized San Quentin Six case and throughout his forty-year career, Zitrin has worked on dozens of cases that underscore the inherent biases of the legal system - towards people of color, the poor, the less educated, and those who just don't appear to fit the mold of whatever society considers "normal". His personal stories bring the reader inside the courtroom to experience a unique cast of characters, strange-but-true facts, brilliant trial tricks and tactics--and not-so-brilliant ones that failed miserably. Each had its own lessons: about social justice, fairness, strategy, ethics, morality, and more.

In 1776, Thomas Paine declared the end of royal rule in the United States. Instead, “law is king,” for the people rule themselves. Paine’s declaration is the dominant American understanding of how political power is exercised. In making law king, American lawyers became integral to the exercise of political power, so integral to law that legal ethics philosopher David Luban concluded, “lawyers are the law.” American lawyers have defended the exercise of this power from the Revolution to the present by arguing their work is channeled by the profession’s standards of ethical behavior. Those standards demand that lawyers serve the public interest and the interests of their paying clients before themselves. The duties owed both to the public and to clients meant lawyers were in the marketplace selling their services, but not of the marketplace. This is the story of power and the limits of ethical constraints to ensure such power is properly wielded. The Lawyer’s Conscience is the first book examining the history of American lawyer ethics, ranging from the mid-eighteenth century to the “professionalism” crisis facing lawyers today.

This book can be used either as a stand-alone reference text for practitioners, or as a rules book in Legal Ethics, Legal Profession, and Professional Responsibility classes to supplement coursebooks for such courses, including Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law by Zitrin et al., now in its fifth edition. This rules edition includes ABA and California changes through 2022, including important amendments regulating the operation of client trust accounts. This book also includes a detailed substantive rule-by-rule comparison of the ABA Model Rules and both new and former California Rules, and changes to the ABA and California Judicial Codes through 2022, including revisions regulating judges' conduct during elections.

Why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so untrustworthy and unprepared? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but crafts an essential manual for attorneys who need to develop better leadership skills.

America is in the midst of a cultural and constitutional law crisis that began more than sixty years ago and was further exacerbated by the 2015 Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision. How did we become a culture that lacks objective morality and embraces secular ideas, hinging on the majority whim of nine justices? How do we get back to being a biblically moral, upright society and recognizing the U.S. Constitution as supreme law of the land? In The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution, Jenna Ellis makes a compelling case for the true roots of America’s Founding Documents in objective morality and how our system of government is founded upon the Christian worldview and God’s unchanging law, not a secular humanist worldview. She provides a unique perspective of the Founding Fathers as lawyers and how they understood the legitimate authority of biblical truth and appealed directly to God’s law for the foundation of America. Weaving together the legal history and underpinning worldview shifts in American culture, Ellis advocates how Christians must change the basic reasoning of our appeal and effectively engage our culture. Finally, she proposes the solution to reclaim objective, biblical morality in law that the Founders themselves provided for through Article V of the U.S. Constitution. This book is for every Christian who seeks to understand the times and our constitutional and cultural crisis.

A noble profession is facing its defining moment. From law schools to the prestigious firms that represent the pinnacle of a legal career, a crisis is unfolding. News headlines tell part of the story—the growing oversupply of new lawyers, widespread career dissatisfaction, and spectacular implosions of pre-eminent law firms. Yet eager hordes of bright young people continue to step over each other as they seek jobs with high rates of depression, life-consuming hours, and little assurance of financial stability. The Great Recession has only worsened these trends, but correction is possible and, now, imperative. In The Lawyer Bubble, Steven J. Harper reveals how a culture of short-term thinking has blinded some of the nation’s finest minds to the long-run implications of their actions. Law school deans have ceded independent judgment to flawed U.S. News & World Report rankings criteria in the quest to maximize immediate results. Senior partners in the nation’s large law firms have focused on current profits to enhance American Lawyer rankings and individual wealth at great cost to their institutions. Yet, wiser decisions—being honest about the legal job market, revisiting the financial incentives currently driving bad behavior, eliminating the billable hour model, and more—can take the profession to a better place. A devastating indictment of the greed, shortsightedness, and dishonesty that now permeate the legal profession, this insider account is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how things went so wrong and how the profession can right itself once again.