Lawyers today are in a moral crisis. The popular perception of the lawyer, both within the legal community and beyond, is no longer the Abe Lincoln of American mythology, but is often a greedy, cynical manipulator of access and power. In The Lawyer's Myth, Walter Bennett goes beyond the caricatures to explore the deeper causes of why lawyers are losing their profession and what it will take to bring it back. Bennett draws on his experience as a lawyer, judge, and law teacher, as well as upon oral histories of lawyers and judges, in his exploration of how and why the legal profession has lost its ennobling mythology. Effectively using examples from history, philosophy, psychology, mythology, and literature, Bennett shows that the loss of professionalism is more than merely the emergence of win-at-all-cost strategies and a scramble for personal wealth. It is something more profound—a loss of professional community and soul. Bennett identifies the old heroic myths of American lawyers and shows how they informed the values of professionalism through the middle of the last century. He shows why, in our more diverse society, those myths are inadequate guides for today's lawyers. And he also discusses the profession's agony over its trickster image and demonstrates how that archetype is not only a psychological reality, but a necessary component of a vibrant professional mythology for lawyers. At the heart of Bennett's eloquently written book is a call to reinvigorate the legal professional community. To do this, lawyers must revive their creative capacities and develop a meaningful, professional mythology—one based on a deeper understanding of professionalism and a broader, more compassionate ideal of justice.

Publisher Description

Approaching the legal profession through the lens of cultural history, Wes Pue explores the social roles lawyers imagined for themselves in England and its expanding empire from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Each chapter focuses on a critical moment when lawyers – whether leaders or rebels – sought to reshape their profession. In the process, they often fancied they were also shaping the culture and politics of both nation and empire as they struggled to develop or adapt professional structures, represent clients, or engage in advocacy. As an exploration of the relationship between legal professionals and liberalism at home or in the Empire, this work draws attention to recurrent disagreements as to how lawyers have best assured their own economic well-being while simultaneously advancing the causes of liberty, cultural authority, stability, and continuity.

This book investigates how the requirements, limitations and intellectual structure of the British legal process have shaped medicine and medical practice. The story of this inter-relationship is greatly under-researched, which is particularly concerning given that the legal system remains a significant and pervasive influence on medicine and its practice to this day. The question which unifies the series of historical studies presented here is whether legal consideration of medical practice and concepts has played a part in the construction of medical concepts and affected developments in medical practice - in other words how the external, legal gaze has shaped the way medicine itself conceptualises some of its practices and classifications. The majority of the chapters consider this question in the context of the development and application of legislation, but the influence of court processes is also considered. Other themes which emerge from the book include the nature and exclusivity of medical expertise, the impact of public opinion on the development of medical legislation, and the difficulty the legal system has faced in dealing with new medical developments. The chapters are arranged chronologically, with an introduction drawing out themes that emerge from the chapters as a whole.

By any measure, the law as a profession is in serious trouble. Americans' trust in lawyers is at a low, and many members of the profession wish they had chosen a different path. Law schools, with their endlessly rising tuitions, are churning out too many graduates for the jobs available. Yet despite the glut of lawyers, the United States ranks 67th (tied with Uganda) of 97 countries in access to justice and affordability of legal services. The upper echelons of the legal establishment remain heavily white and male. Most problematic of all, the professional organizations that could help remedy these concerns instead jealously protect their prerogatives, stifling necessary innovation and failing to hold practitioners accountable. Deborah Rhode's The Trouble with Lawyers is a comprehensive account of the challenges facing the American bar. She examines how the problems have affected (and originated within) law schools, firms, and governance institutions like bar associations; the impact on the justice system and access to lawyers for the poor; and the profession's underlying difficulties with diversity. She uncovers the structural problems, from the tyranny of law school rankings and billable hours to the lack of accountability and innovation built into legal governance-all of which do a disservice to lawyers, their clients, and the public. The Trouble with Lawyers is a clear call to fix a profession that has gone badly off the rails, and a source of innovative responses.

Studies what lawyers do in challenging contexts of conflict, authoritarianism, and the transition from violence.

This set includes all three books of the John Smyth Mysteries series: Who's Grace?, Desolation Highway, and Mountaintop Drive. In Who's Grace?, James Coggins presents a fast-paced murder mystery with a twist. A Christian magazine editor named John Smyth witnesses a murder through the window of an airplane as it descends for a landing in Winnipeg, Canada. Neither the city police nor the RCMP (Mounties) take his tip seriously until an unidentified woman's body turns up in some nearby woods two weeks later. The only clue to her identity is a necklace with a pendant bearing the name 'Grace.' Who is she, and where is her killer? As the case twists and turns, everyone involved gets to see clear evidence of the grace of God. In Desolation Highway, two bodies are found in the forest near the Yellowhead Highway in northern British Columbia, prompting Sergeant Wesson and other members of the local detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to begin searching for a serial murderer. Suspects include a woodsman who makes wildlife sculptures using a chainsaw, an antisocial doctor, a strange woman engaged in occult practices, and a group of Native youth addicted to gasoline sniffing. As more dismembered bodies turn up, John Smyth, editor of Grace magazine in Winnipeg, visits the area and starts putting pieces of the puzzle together. In Mountaintop Drive, it is just like a second honeymoon when diminutive editor John Smyth and his wife, Ruby, are invited to stay in a beautiful mountaintop house while attending a church convention in Canada's "Bible Belt." Everything seems perfect--until the woman next door is murdered. Has trouble from the impoverished streets of old Abbotsford invaded the upscale community of Mountaintop Drive?

This is the first book that directly addresses the cultural history of the legal profession. An international team of scholars canvasses wide-ranging issues concerning the culture of the legal profession and the wider cultural significance of lawyers,including consideration of the relation to cultural processes of state formation and colonisation. The essays describe and analyse significant aspects of the cultural history of the legal profession in England, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, Norway and Finland. The book seeks to understand the complex ways in which lawyers were imaginatively and institutionally constructed, and their larger cultural significance. It illustrates both the diversity and the potential of a cultural approach to lawyers in history. Contents: Introduction and Overview; Part I The Formation of Lawyers; Part II Lawyers and the Liberal State; Part III Work and Representations; Part IV Lawyers and Colonialism Contributors: David Applebaum, Professor of History, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ; Harold Dick, Barrister and Solicitor, City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Ann Fidler, Assistant Professor and Dean, History Department, Honors Tutorial College, Ohio University; Jean-Louis Halperin, University of Bourgogne, CNRS; Esa Konttinen.Senior Lecturer of Sociology, University of Jyraskyla, Finland; David Lemmings, Associate Professor of History, University of Newcastle, Australia; Anne McGillivray, Professor of Law, University of Manitoba, Canada; Rob McQueen, Professor of Law, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia; Kjell A Modeer, Lund University, Sweden; W. Wesley Pue, Nemetz Chair in Legal History, Faculty of Law, University of British Columbia; John Savage, Assistant Professor, History Department, Lehigh University; Hannes Siegrist, Professor of Modern European History, University of Leipzig; David Sugarman, Professor of Law, Law School, Lancaster University.