{"product_id":"the-practice-of-justice-a-theory-of-lawyers-ethics-paper-9780674002753","title":"The Practice of Justice  A Theory of Lawyers","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShould a lawyer keep a client's secrets even when disclosure would exculpate a person wrongly accused of a crime? When can lawyers justifiably make procedural maneuvers that defeat substantive rights? Simon offers a fresh look at these and other traditional questions about the ethics of lawyering.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThough slender and unpretentious, William Simon's new book, \u003ci\u003eThe Practice of Justice,\u003c\/i\u003e packs a wallop. Aiming at nothing less than a radical rethinking of lawyer's ethics, it proposes a new conception of our professional responsibilities and challenges us to examine critically the conventional norms of our professional role. Along the way, it explores the scope and underpinning of our loyalty to clients, our obligations to protect the rights of third parties and our duty to promote justice...Simon's writing is lucid, well-organized and jargon-free...The cogency of [his] critique of the dominant view...shakes the grounds on which we currently practice...Thus, Simon's work is profoundly unsettling, even disorienting, both intellectually and emotionally. Therein lies its enormous value. -- James M. Altman * New York Law Journal *\u003cbr\u003eThus, it is easily argued that lawyers should practice under a very different ethical regime. The problem is, then, what should that regime look like? How should we expect lawyers to act in the current context? Simon offers a valuable answer, to be sure…It hasn't closed the debate over legal, but jump-started it by making a serious and important contribution to thinking about the practice of law. For that he merits great praise. -- Thomas M. Hilbink * The Law and Politics Book Review *\u003cbr\u003eWilliam Simon is the George Orwell of the legal profession, a fearless, bluntly honest and clear-sighted observer whose sharp critique of lawyers' practices arises from his deep attachment to their ideals. Simon's book is clearly one of the most important statements of the aims, purposes, and practical ethics of law practice ever to have appeared in this legal culture. His ambition is to reconceptualize the entire subject, to give a thorough exposition and critique of the ethical views that currently permeate law practice in this society, and to put forward a fully-fledged alternative. The special power and appeal of Simon's approach consists in that he views legal ethics neither as solely tied to specialized rules or roles nor as a branch of personal morality, but as necessarily and intimately connected with the justice-serving goals of the legal system. His analysis of how lawyers can cope with the inevitable complexities and ambiguities of a legal system shot through with conflicting purposes is especially brilliant. Unlike so much writing on professional ethics, Simon's is neither naively idealistic nor cynical and demoralized: it is impressive because his views are grounded in considerable experience, personal and vicarious, of how lawyers actually behave--every point is illustrated by thickly described examples of real practice situations--and are also linked to basic conceptions of jurisprudence and social theory. It would be hard to find a better illustration in legal literature of how theory can inform and structure inquiries into practice, and the knowledge of practice in turn help to qualify and amplify theoretical insight. Original and unconventional, Simon's work challenges almost all of the prevailing orthodoxies of legal ethics. Whether or not lawyers are ultimately convinced by Simon's efforts to reconstruct legal ethics on a foundation of lawyering as a justice-seeking profession, if they read his work carefully they will never be able again to think about their work in the comfortable old formula of zealous advocacy in an adversary system. -- Robert W. Gordon * Yale Law School *\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction   An Anxious Profession   The Moral Terrain of Lawyering   The Dominant View and Alternatives   A Preview   False Starts    A Right to Injustice   The Entitlement Argument    The Libertarian Premise    The Positivist Premise    Libertarianism versus Positivism    The Problem of Retroactivity    The Problem of Private Legislation    Conclusion    Justice in the Long Run   Confidentiality    The Adversary System and Trial Preparation    Identification with Clients and Cognitive Dissonance    The Efficiency of Categorical Norms    Aptitude for Complex Judgment    Conclusion    Should Lawyers Obey the Law?   Lawyer Obligation in the Dominant View    Positivist versus Substantive Conceptions of Law   The Pervasiveness of Implicit Nullification    Some Clarification about Nullification    Nullification versus Reform    Tax versus Prohibition    Determination versus Obligation    A Prima Facie Obligation?    Divorce Perjury and Enforcement Advice Revisited    Conclusion    Legal Professionalism as Meaningful Work   The Problem of Alienation    The Professional Solution    The Lost Lawyer     The Brandeisian Evasions    Self-Betrayal   Conclusion    Legal Ethics as Contextual Judgment   The Structure of Legal Ethics Problems    Some Objections    The Moral Terrain of Lawyering Revisited    Is Criminal Defense Different?   Contested Issues    Weak Arguments for Aggressive Criminal Defense    Social Work, Justice, and Nullification    The Stakes    Conclusion    Institutionalizing Ethics   A Contextual Disciplinary Regime: The Tort Model    Restructuring the Market for Legal Services    Conclusion    Notes   Further Reading   Acknowledgments   Index","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403510260055,"sku":"9780674002753","price":31.46,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9780674002753.jpg?v=1730483687","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-practice-of-justice-a-theory-of-lawyers-ethics-paper-9780674002753","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}