Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession explores timely questions about the role of pro bono in the legal profession, the relationship between pro bono ideals and pro bono in practice, and the opportunities and limitations of pro bono in expanding access to justice. The contributing writers explore theoretical, empirical, and practical questions regarding the role of pro bono and public service in the legal profession and in law schools. The research presented not only highlights the increase in pro bono efforts across the legal profession but critically examines the limitations of pro bono work, as well as the potential problems such work may pose to the ideal of achieving greater access to justice.
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.
Public Interest Lawyering is the first comprehensive analysis of public interest lawyering that is suitable as a law school elective text and/or advanced legal profession courses and seminars. Drawing upon a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this timely textbook examines the lives of public interest lawyers, the clients and causes they serve, the contexts within which they work, the strategies they deploy, and the challenges they face today. Features: The first comprehensive overview of the broad range of contemporary issues faced by public interest lawyers in any American law school text. Thorough discussion of important theoretical issues about the scope and definition of public interest lawyering. Addresses American public interest law from a historical perspective with focus on current issues. Expansive examination of the settings in which public interest practice occurs, including nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and private law firms. Presents the advantages and limits of different legal strategies in public interest practice, including lobbying, public education, community organizing, and community economic development. Addresses contemporary challenges of public interest law in context, including economics and financing, legal ethics, the role of legal education, and the globalization of public interest practice. Discusses critiques of public interest law, including a reflection about the role of lawyers in social movements that addresses contemporary critiques. Ethical obligations of public interest lawyers. Explores special issues related to lawyer-client relations in social change contexts. Extensive coverage of: Models of law reform organizations. Conservative cause lawyering. Government lawyers. The economics of social change lawyering. Global social change lawyering.
This volume convincingly lays to rest two held beliefs that have long impeded scholarly analysis of the role of courts and litigation in American politics: 1) that group resort to the courts is a rather recent phenomenon resulting from actions of the Warren Court and the Civil Rights Movement; and 2) that unique and distinctive features of the judiciary somehow place it beyond or outside analytic frameworks used to study and analyze the role, nature and functioning of other governing institutions such as the Congress and the presidency. The title of the volume ~ Public Interest Law Sourcebook -- accurately describes its central purpose and method as descriptive and informative.
What is public interest law? How effective is it? What are the limits to litigation as a mechanism for conflict resolution? In this study, economists, lawyers, and sociologists evaluate an institutional form that is new to American society and, indeed, to the world--the public interest law (PIL) organization. The book introduces the reader to the structure, resources, and activities of this "nonprofit industry," and also to the factors that affect PIL firms in their choices of cases and methods of handling them. The authors examine PIL's vast range of contemporary public policy concerns. These incude such general topics as the environment, consumerism, housing, employment discrimination, medical care, occupational health and safety, education finance, and taxation. A number of base studies are presented, and a method for economic analysis and evaluation is introduced and applied. The study points to PIL's success in advocating under-represented interests, in winning courtroom decisions, and in translating legal victories into reallocations of resources. At the same time, it notes the bias of PIL towards test-case litigation, a propensity to focus on judicial victories rather than on real social change, and a tendency to use lawyers even when other types of professionals might be more effective. Many of these problems stem from uncertainty of funding and legal restrictions on "nonprofit" organizations. The result is a set of hurdles that distracts PIL firms from their principal goals. The authors do not limit themselves to PIL, but comment on the effectiveness of legal instruments as devices for social change, and on the behavior of the voluntary nonprofit sector, a little-studied portion of the economy. The book presents a fresh approach to the study of both collective-type economic problems and institutional setting in which public interest law works. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1978.
The ABA Journal serves the legal profession. Qualified recipients are lawyers and judges, law students, law librarians and associate members of the American Bar Association.
Published in 1997, an edited collection of essays by a group of international public interest scholars and activists that examines the role and function of the law school in developing, transmitting and understanding the use of law to bring about social change to the advantage of subordinated people. The book traces this influence from the early days of the law school and its induction of legal principles and client responsibilities, through training for practices in a variety of settings, including teaching, social action research, client empowerment programs, to the outer limits of law school in community legal education and awareness. An important and pioneering series of international case studies.
How to Fight for What's Right is a guide for both lawyers and lay people offering guidance through the legal thickets they face when they take on government and business in the courts. This book will meet the needs of environmentalists, civil rights organizations, consumer groups, lawyers, and legal staff of community law clinics--it's the guide that shows citizen groups how to use the legal system to their advantage. First published in 1981, How to Fight for What's Right remains a practical and useful guide to advocacy and the law.
The ABA Journal serves the legal profession. Qualified recipients are lawyers and judges, law students, law librarians and associate members of the American Bar Association.
