ABSTRACT Recent studies indicate that lawyers are at greater risk of experiencing stress, anxiety, depression and burnout symptoms than other occupational groups and the general population. Opinion pieces have suggested that workplace culture and law practice characteristics can explain the distress. However, no empirical studies have considered the potential impact of the factors on lawyer’s mental

(2022). Editorial. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 1-1.

ABSTRACT Lawyers’ alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practice is an important part of legal practice and education. In this research project, we explored the views of planning lawyers in Melbourne, Australia who were engaged in the ADR processes of mediation and compulsory conferencing. The participants interviewed endorsed the use of ADR in planning disputes and spoke of the need to adopt a collaborative

ABSTRACT In Flanders, a renewed Decree on Local Social Policy (2018) introduced the concept of “Integrated-Rights Practice” (IRP). In brief, IRP aims to guarantee social rights by creating local interorganizational networks that foster generalist, pro-active, outreaching, strengths-based and participative social work interventions (Boost et al., 2018). In our paper, we will focus on an ongoing project

ABSTRACT Rising reports of poor mental health and well-being in lawyers across multiple jurisdictions, notably the United States of America, Australia, and the United Kingdom (UK), have led to a growing international focus on this topic. Yet there remains a paucity of empirical data on the well-being of solicitors practising in England and Wales. Framed by self-determination theory (SDT), we undertook

ABSTRACT Junior legal academics represent the future of teaching and research in law schools, and are vital in shaping the future of the legal profession. However, while research has focused on academic staff appointed on casual contracts, we know very little about junior academics who have obtained permanent employment. This paper examines the biographies of 700 junior academics within Australian

ABSTRACT The legal profession in Ghana traces its origins to the British legal system which was transplanted to Ghana during colonization. Since the first Ghanaian lawyer was called to the British Bar in 1887, the legal profession has grown and developed into a cadre of lawyers who act in various professional capacities. This article uses a historical institutionalist approach in examining the development

(2021). Editorial. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 241-241.

ABSTRACT Both case law of the European Court of Human Rights and EU legal instruments on the one hand, and academic legal psychological literature on the other, recognise the specific needs of so-called vulnerable suspects in criminal proceedings. In this regard, the important role of the criminal defence lawyer in compensating for a suspect’s vulnerability is emphasised, especially because vulnerable

ABSTRACT The English Bar sets great store by traditions and symbols. One of these, the cab rank rule, is considered above reproach. The author was commissioned to examine the working of the rule by the Legal Services Board. The resulting analysis caused much indignation among the Bar with a complete rejection of the research. This article discusses from sociological and economic perspectives how the

ABSTRACT Women lawyers are still grossly underrepresented in arbitration which is a field of big business where high incomes are made. It is dominated by big law firms. Till two decades ago the number of women in these firms was small, but as in many countries women meanwhile outnumber men in legal education, the law firms have to hire women increasingly as they need the female talent. On associate

(2021). Editorial/Introduction. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 28, Special Issue on Regulating Lawyers Through Disciplinary Systems, pp. 127-128.

ABSTRACT The concept of pro bono has been established in a variety of countries and has developed a distinctive discourse. Aspects of this discourse have also begun to impact other areas of the law, such as mitigation in professional misconduct. However, problems can arise if aspects of one discourse are imported into others. Using the Singapore law of professional misconduct as a case study, this

ABSTRACT This article explores how classical sociological theories such as functionalism, critical approaches, and Weberian intepretivism, can help understand the legal profession in the digital age. It argues that functionalist approaches allow to explore the changing societal role of lawyers in a digital world. Critical approaches allow for understanding how the legal profession respond to different

ABSTRACT From around the millennial turn, Australia was to the fore among common law countries in the liberalisation of legal practice with a range of radical reforms, such as the ownership of firms by non-lawyers and listing on the stock exchange. Albeit not peculiar to Australia, technological innovations, including remote working, digitalised platforms and artificial intelligence (AI), are also

(2021). Introduction. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 28, Special Issue in Honour of Philip Lewis, pp. 1-3.

ABSTRACT This paper begins by explaining Philip Lewis’s key contribution to the development of legal professions studies, culminating in the three volume comparative work Lawyers in Society to which he contributed and co-edited with Rick Abel [(1988a) Lawyers in Society: Vol I The Common Law World (Berkeley, University of California Press); (1988b) Lawyers in Society: Vol II The Civil Law World (Berkeley

ABSTRACT Government lawyers have been rather neglected by scholars interested in the workings of the legal profession and the role of professional groups in contemporary society. This is surprising given the potential for them to influence the internal workings of an increasingly legalistic and centralised state. This article aims to partly fill this gap by looking at the way that lawyers employed

ABSTRACT A considerable amount of literature exists on the office of the Lord Chancellor and the unique role of the holders of this office played in the British constitution for many hundreds of years. However, hardly any research has been undertaken on the civil servants that worked in the Lord Chancellor's Office and the way in which they assisted the navigation of a difficult path between matters

ABSTRACT Presidents of the UK Supreme Court have a degree of flexibility in how they approach their role, and how they exercise the power that they undoubtedly have to shape key aspects of collective judicial decision-making in the Court. This article, based on interviews with the Justices, focuses on the way that Lord Neuberger interpreted the role and how his colleagues thought that he carried out

ABSTRACT This study deals with misconduct cases involving solicitors, the largest legal profession in England and Wales. It covers a 20 year period and focuses in detail on three points during that period: 1994–1996, 2008 and 2015. These points cover different stages during the evolution of the regulatory system from what was arguably the height of legal professionalism to the post-professional system

ABSTRACT The study of lawyers and legal professionals has long been fertile ground for socio-legal research. Such inquiries typically emphasize the role of these attorneys in shaping social processes and dealing with social problems, for example, with respect to class, gender, and racial inequality in the profession. By contrast, we present a macro-sociological study that examines how immigrant status

ABSTRACT A lawyer regulatory system will usually include a mechanism to discipline lawyers who have committed misconduct. Such mechanism may have different objective(s) and function(s), which may vary from jurisdictions to jurisdictions. The Japanese system seemingly has, inter alia, deterrent and educational purposes: discouraging further misconduct and/or educating lawyers to reduce recurrence of

ABSTRACT This paper examines the work of criminal legal aid solicitors and the state of practice under challenging conditions for the sector. Drawing on an empirical study in south Wales containing 20 semi-structured interviews, it provides original data on the frontline of criminal practice. It is argued – using vulnerability theory – that the challenges facing criminal legal aid solicitors deplete

ABSTRACT International organizations such as the International Bar Association (IBA), International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), and United Nations (UN) have been engaged in efforts to reform Myanmar's laws regarding the legal profession as part of larger rule-of-law initiatives in the country. Part of such efforts are strategies to change professional conduct rules to match international practices

ABSTRACT The unaffordability of legal assistance is a widespread problem in New Zealand, as it is in many other common law countries. One way legal assistance is made more accessible is by lawyers offering discounting and payment plans. There is very limited research about how these practices operate and whether they are effective at delivering services to people in need. This article reports the results

ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore how clients perceive the competence of female lawyers in Ghanaian law firms. As an exploratory qualitative study, thematic analytic approach was used to analyse the interview data gathered from 15 clients of law firms. The findings reveal that clients consider the gender of lawyers when making hiring decisions and determining competence. The findings also suggest

ABSTRACT This paper discusses how digital technologies including artificial intelligence (AI) reshape the work of lawyers and the organisations that they work for. We overview how AI is being used in legal services, and identify three distinct impacts: AI substitutes automatable legal tasks; AI enhances productivity of lawyers giving advice on the basis of AI-generated outputs; and legal expertise

ABSTRACT Do lawyer fees influence lawyer behavior? The impact of lawyer fees on lawyer behavior has been discussed theoretically and anecdotally, mostly from an aspect of economic incentives. Yet little research has empirically examined this issue. This article aims to add one empirical study. I conducted a vignette experiment with 206 Japanese divorce lawyers. Scenarios of divorce disputes involving

ABSTRACT This paper looks at the human rights and immigration lawyers in Russia inspired by the approach that embraces both human and non-human objects in shaping the everyday experiences of the law. Drawing on five months ethnographic fieldwork in Russian legal aid NGOs that represent asylum seekers and interviews with the immigration lawyers who worked there, this paper casts more light on the file-based

ABSTRACT New Zealand’s new regulatory system for lawyers has been operating since 2008. This article evaluates this system – it has several positive features, but there are also items of concern. These include delays in resolving complaints, especially at the Legal Complaints Review Officer level. Whether there is sufficient publicity on the workings of the disciplinary system, its outcomes, and the

ABSTRACT Pro bono is seen as an important aspect of the working lives of many legal professionals. The withdrawal of legal aid for most civil law claims has led to a greater need for pro bono legal services. This article describes and analyses the findings of an empirical study with solicitors to explore their views on pro bono. It seeks to understand perceptions of pro bono work and examine the reasons

(2020). Editorial. International Journal of the Legal Profession: Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 217-217.

ABSTRACT This article presents an effort to transcend the law vs business dichotomy that usually tends to prevail in discussions on the future of the legal profession, by identifying the various logics to which lawyers are exposed. It uses a computer-assisted analysis of trade magazines from 1985 to 2015 to document the changes that have taken place in lawyers’ perceptions of their work and their role

ABSTRACT Pro bono's development in São Paulo, Brazil, has been a conflictive process, resisted by multiple segments in the legal profession. In 2001, this conflict led the São Paulo State Bar to impose regulatory restrictions on pro bono practice. One of these restrictions involved pro bono services to individuals, which firms or any other practitioner were explicitly prohibited from delivering. In

ABSTRACT This paper examines the ethical behaviour of new lawyers from two contrasting points of view. First, we review the prevalence and type of ethical misconduct by lawyers in the Australian state of Victoria during their first three years of practice. This examination is based upon data provided by the professional conduct oversight body, the Victorian Legal Services Board & Commissioner. An analysis

ABSTRACT This article analyses the importance of including corporate legal officers (also termed general counsel or chief legal officers) in the anti-money laundering (AML) international standard set by the Financial Action Task Force – in particular, the Recommendations dealing with the legal profession. It deconstructs the origins and development of the standard and explores the reasons that led

The six papers in this special issue deal with various aspects of women in the judiciary in six different countries: two contributions are from sub-Saharan Africa: South Africa and Nigeria, two from Europe: Northern Ireland and Spain and two from very different parts of Asia: Turkey and the Philippines. The papers on Africa and Europe have been presented at an Expert Seminar on Gender and the Judiciary

ABSTRACT In Spain, the number of female judges at the highest levels of the judiciary is very low, despite the approval of two Strategic Plans for Equality in the Judicial Career (2013 and 2020). This situation does not seem to differ from other European countries, according to the data offered by CEPEJ (2018). It is clear that the end of tokenism has not yet arrived, and for that reason, an analysis

ABSTRACT Public trust in the legal profession rests on regulators taking timely and effective action in response to misconduct. Usually, case-by-case analysis occurs after a claim or complaint is lodged with little attention on factors that may predispose a lawyer to misconduct. Vulnerability is a useful concept for understanding individuals’ susceptibility to harm and for identifying safeguards to

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between the quality of legal education in Colombia and the gender and socio-economic status of law students. This paper shows that women with low economic capital tend to be the most disadvantaged because they can neither afford the best private law programs nor pass the admission tests of the best public programs. By contrast, upper-class women are guaranteed

ABSTRACT There is a symbiotic relationship between the legal profession and the tertiary education sector. The law degree itself is symbolic of this close relationship. Standards of the legal profession are reflected in the legal qualifications obtained by law students who wish to practice law. However the clarity of such professional requirements for legal practice become increasingly opaque with

ABSTRACT Women have made considerable progress in terms of their entrance into the legal profession, such that they are advancing towards parity with men on the High Court benches in Nigeria. This study is a product of qualitative empirical data gathered from interviews with judges and information gleaned from government records and personal files of judges in the Archives of the judiciaries in Mid-Western

ABSTRACT In the West, women have practiced law and advocated greater gender diversity in the legal profession for more than a century. In Qatar, concepts such as “equality of opportunity” and “diversity or inclusion in the profession” are virtually unexplored by research and only beginning to appear in casual conversations. While the number of women studying law in Qatar has significantly increased

ABSTRACT Law Student Oaths, Honour Codes and Pledges have been variously used as a way to communicate and regulate standards of law student behaviour and to inculcate them into the ethical and professional values and attitudes seen as important for future legal professionals, such as a commitment to honesty and integrity. Variations of Oaths, Codes and Pledges are used extensively in America and in

ABSTRACT In Japan, the quasi-legal profession of judicial scriveners (shihō-shoshi) traditionally prepared documents for litigants to file with courts but did not have the right to represent them in courts. As part of the justice system reform, from April 2003, shihō-shoshi who took an induction course, passed a certification examination and obtained the Justice Minister’s certification are permitted

ABSTRACT This paper considers women’s representation in the under-explored context of the judiciary in Northern Ireland. Previous research into the experiences of women practitioners in the legal profession in Northern Ireland has indicated that women are discouraged from pursuing judicial careers for a variety of reasons associated with their gender. Further research into the gendered barriers these

ABSTRACT The shifting focus of criminal proceedings from the trial to the pre-trial stages leads to a changing role of criminal defence practitioners across Europe. European criminal defence lawyers are now expected to enter the proceedings earlier and exercise “active” and “participatory” defence as early as the investigative stage. Criminal lawyers, trained in the traditional trial-centred paradigm

ABSTRACT The objective of this article is to examine the unexplored role of public defenders who provide legal aid services to immigrants within the debate on the migration control and rescue industries. Although these services are provided by bar associations, public organizations that group private professionals, they are paid for with government funds due to regulations guaranteeing the right to

ABSTRACT Academics are becoming increasingly internationally mobile, and yet there is still limited research into the nature, outcomes and limits of academic mobility. This paper examines the biographies of over 700 academics employed within Australian law schools. It identifies legal academics who hold academics qualifications have been employed outside of Australia. Almost a quarter of legal academics

ABSTRACT This article reports on the findings of a pilot research project investigating current best practices, operating within national law firms in Australia, that support women lawyers in their advancement to partnership and other leadership positions. Academic research and professional body reports suggest that current diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives across the private sector are not

ABSTRACT This study is a feminist exploration of how gender influences the professional and social lives of women judges in Turkey. I asked women judges from lower courts to talk about their professional journey to explore if and how gender emerges as a category that makes sense to them. Gender was sometimes more visible in the form of a “success” story of playing along men’s rules, or in memories

ABSTRACT On 24 August 2012, the Honourable Maria Lourdes Sereno was appointed Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, the first woman to hold such position since its establishment in 1901. Several cases involving important women’s issues decided during her term were reviewed in this work, inspired by the possibility that a young, brilliant and hardworking woman of humble beginnings sitting at

ABSTRACT This article describes how Russian law schools understand their objectives today and whether there is an ideal model of a jurist to which law schools should conform. Different qualitative methods were used in this study, including a review of the post-Soviet legal education reforms, analysis of regulations governing higher legal education, analysis of websites, and expert semi-structured interviews

ABSTRACT The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) in South Africa was established in response to a pre-democratic era appointment system rich in patronage, opaqueness, and invariably, inequality. The use of judicial appointment bodies has been recommended by the Commonwealth Latimer House Principles, as a method of preserving judicial independence. However, not much research has been conducted into whether

This collection arises out of a workshop on “Too Few Judges?” in Oñati in 2016. The workshop followed one on “Too many Lawyers?” and was intended to expose and begin to understand the general claims regarding the scarcity of judges and its consequences which appeared as an important issue in a number of jurisdictions. The concerns are that citizens and organizations may be denied access to justice;

ABSTRACT This research analyses disciplinary decisions of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Disciplinary Tribunal (NZLCDT) from 2011 to 2017 that involve vulnerable clients. Increasingly, scholarship discusses vulnerability as an ethical concept, including in the legal context. Based on published decisions, the present study inquires whether some legal clients’ vulnerability warrants special

ABSTRACT This paper raises some methodological issues when a comparative approach is used to compare the number of judges and court personnel in European judiciaries. Data come from the Commission for the Efficiency of Justice (CEPEJ) of the Council of Europe, which also is the main source for the European Union Justice Scoreboard. Some proposals are made to improve the collection of data and, then

ABSTRACT In the US, courts widely perceive that judicial scarcity is a common problem threatening the fair and timely resolution of disputes. Courts cite the attendant interest in judicial economy to justify interpreting the procedural and substantive law to reduce the judicial workload or accelerate the resolution of cases. But courts’ assumption that there are too few judges to handle the current

Van Rossum opens this issue considering how legal education might handle ‘late modernity’. This is described as ‘a complex society ruled by uncertainty that faces the challenge of allocating responsibility’ owing to technical changes and the demystification of science together with globalisation. Van Rossum ends with some initial suggestions for possible adjustments to legal education to deal with