ADR and the Professional Responsibility of Lawyers
Should the meaning of “ethical” lawyering change in the ADR context? This article contains several essays arguing that change is needed, that current ethics rules and codes must be adjusted, and new rules must be drafted that respond to the subtleties and complexities of the issues raised in ADR legal practice. Professor Carrie Menkel-Meadow provides an overview of the major ethical issues facing lawyers in ADR practice and reviews the current ethics rules landscape in ADR. Professor Robert Cochran offers a proposal to amend the current professional responsibility rules to include a mandate for advising clients of ADR options. Professor Kimberlee Kovach argues in favor of a new ethic for non-adversarial representation. Finally, Professor Stephen Huber addresses a number of critical ethical issues implicated by arbitration practice.
Asking Leopards to Change Their Spots: Should Lawyers Change? A Critique of Solutions to Problems with Professionalism by Reference to Empirically-Derived Attorney PersonalityAttributes
The legal profession is at a crossroads. Public opinion of attorneys and the legal system is very low, dissatisfaction among lawyers both professionally and personally is widely known, substance abuse and other psychological problems are almost twice as frequent among attorneys as in the general population, attorney discipline cases and malpractice suits appear to be common, and the lack of civility and "professionalism" among attorneys is frequently discussed. Some say these problems have always been present and have not necessarily increased in recent years. However, others suggest that these phenomena are reaching crisis proportions. The problems seem to fall into three categories: professionalism, public opinion, and lawyer dissatisfaction. Together, these three problems form a "tripartite crisis in today's legal profession.
The Discourses of Mediation and the Power of Naming
their homes. Both plaintiffs and defendants were interviewed. I conducted about 50 interviews and several research assistants did the rest. In addition, I spent hundreds of hours observing court proceedings including hearings in front of clerk-magistrates, talking informally to court personnel, mediators, and mediation program staff, and doing general historical and ethnographic work on the towns. Susan Silbey also did extensive ethnographic work in observing court proceedings and interviewing court personnel. Fifth, we did an ethnographic study of three small neighborhoods where interpersonal conflicts occurred fairly often. This included a survey of 93 residents of these neighborhoods about how often they had the kinds of problems we saw in mediation and what they did about them. The survey was part of a more intensive ethnographic study which included long conversations with several of the residents of these neighborhoods. I did the general ethnographic interviewing and background work in these neighborhoods and several neighborhood residents and students did the survey interviewing. In order to compare these working-class and lower-middle-class neighborhoods with an upper-middle-class neighborhood, in the summer of 1985 I did a similar survey and ethnographic study of an affluent suburban neighborhood. A student did the survey, while I again did more general ethnographic work on the neighborhood. See Merry, Crowd-ing, Conflict, and Neighborhood Regulation, in Neighborhood and Community Environments 35 (1. Altman & A. Wandersman ed. 1987).