The Practice and the Pressure to Progress

As one of the most traditional professions, the practice of law has been slower than most to adapt to technological advances and recognize the impact on the changing nature of work for attorneys. Only two state bar associations currently require continuing legal education in technology. New York's bar association has recommended mandatory training in cybersecurity; however, it would comprise only 1 credit within the Ethics & Professionalism Continuing Legal Education (CLE) requirements. This chapter will explore the negative “domino effect” that disregarding or underestimating the power of technology in both legal education and practice can have on access, diversity, and ultimately justice. By presenting the evidence here, perhaps the profession through its many and varied institutions and organizations can finally turn against the tide of tradition. The profession and its oversight bodies must look farther back in the pathway to practice to re-imagine legal education and embrace that which is now possible through technology and innovative teaching and learning methods.

Evaluation of Attorney’s Law in Terms of Administrative Law

Advocacy aims at providing legal assistance in fairly resolving legal disputes. It is a fact that there is a public interest in the performance of this activity. A lawyer performs this activity under the supervision and control of the bar association. Public service is the professional activity carried out by the lawyer/ advocate. This paper evaluated public service in terms of accountability to public officials and administrative organizations. In terms of public service, attorneyship has been examined both organically and financially. In terms of the administrative organization, the professional organizations in the form of public institutions - the bar associations which are the professional organizations of the lawyers - and the admission of a lawyer to the legal profession were evaluated in this paper.

Disciplinary Liability of Members of Collective Bodies of the Self-Government of Legal Advisers

The subject of this study is to examine the possibility of holding members of the collective bodies of the self-government of the National Bar of Attorneys-at-Law to disciplinary action for decisions made by the body on which they sit. The key question that can be asked in this respect is: Can an attorney-at-law who is a member of the Bar Association of Attorneys-at-Law or the National Bar Council of Attorneys-at-Law be held liable in disciplinary action with a decision made in a collegial manner by an authority in whose structures is a member?

Different but similar?: Comparing the IBA Rules on the taking of evidence with the Prague Rules

Until recently, the most common source concerning the taking of evidence in international arbitrations has been the International Bar Association (IBA) Rules on Taking of Evidence in International Arbitration. The IBA Rules have been updated periodically including most recently in 2020 demonstrating its flexibility and wide acceptance. However, rising concerns about costs and delays due to the adversarial nature of the IBA Rules has led to increasing scrutiny and criticism. A consequence of these criticisms was the formation of the Working Group that led to the creation of the Rules on the Efficient Conduct of Proceedings in International Arbitration (the ‘Prague Rules’). This article seeks to discuss the differences between the IBA Rules and the Prague Rules with a focus on the evidentiary process. Both set of rules begin with differing starting assumptions. However, we argue that the IBA Rules and the Prague Rules, while emerging from, and representing the ideals of two different legal systems, have a lot in common. The difference may not ultimately be as wide as one might initially envision.

An inch of progress: new ethics opinion gets real about assistance to fraud and crime

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyze the current law on the professional responsibility of American attorneys to combat financial crimes and developments in light of recent scandals and new ethics opinion from the American Bar Association. Further commentary is offered on the ethics of advancing the mission to not assist clients in financial wrongdoing. Design/methodology/approach This paper offers a legal analysis of recent developments pertaining to the ethical regulation of attorney conduct regarding client involvement in financial crimes. Examination of these developments in light of contemporary best practices in the banking and financial services industry assists in determining how to improve the current regulatory approach. There is an extensive review of case law and both academic and professional literature. Findings The findings of this paper indicate that a proactive culture exists that acknowledges the deficiencies that still exist in the regulation of attorney ethics to combat financial crimes by clients. Still, significant gaps remain that need to be addressed. Further issues remain unresolved in the context of key legal doctrines that set out clear, concise standards for knowledge and assistance. Originality/value The value of this paper comes from the careful analysis of present best practices in banking and financial services regulation and how they could be better applied in the context of the attorney–client relationship.

Lon Fuller: A Progenitor of the Pedagogy of Skills?

This essay examines Professor Fuller’s Mediation—Its Forms and Functions article for passages that describe a number of the specific skills that students learn in law school mediation courses today and that reflect his recognition of, and admiration for, their essentiality. Professor Fuller passed away in 1978, long before the legal academy’s reorientation toward a pedagogy of skills. Influenced by the MacCrate and Carnegie Reports and Roy Stuckey’s Best Practices and by the recommendations of its Task Force on the Future of Legal Education, the American Bar Association (ABA) approved Standard 303 in 2014, pursuant to which law schools must offer a curriculum that requires each student to satisfactorily complete six credit hours of experiential course(s) in the form of a simulation course, a law clinic, or a field placement that “integrate(s) doctrine, theory, skills, and legal ethics, and [that] engage[s] students in performance of … professional skills. …” (ABA Standard 303(a)(3)(i), 2017–18)....

DP 0256 - Judicial attitudes under shifting jurisprudence: evidence from Brazil's new drug law of 2006

This paper exploits the diversity of panels at the court of appeals in the state of São Paulo to address the role of career backgrounds and ideology in shaping the response of judicial decisions to a major shift in jurisprudence on drug offenses. The Brazilian constitution reserves 80% of the seats in appellate courts to career judges, 10% to lawyers and 10% to prosecutors. In practice however, vacancies in panels coupled with backlogs have significantly increased participation of judges sitting by designation in appellate panels - who acted as rapporteurs in as much as 14% of all criminal appeals in São Paulo, between 2009-2013. Former lawyers and prosecutors are appointed by the state governor after nomination processes at the bar association and at the ministerial office. Judges sitting by designation are chosen at the discretion of the court’s highest council and do not retain prerogatives of tenured appellate judges and are typically hired with the purpose of reducing backlogs. Their performance affects their chances of being promoted to the court of appeals, relatively to similar judges that have not been designated. Based on a large dataset of criminal appeals related to drug offenses in the State São Paulo, Brazil, this study exploits the exogenous assignment of cases to rapporteurs, to identify the causal effects of career backgrounds on the response of appellate judges to a major shift in drug jurisprudence, which revoked the prohibition of conversion of confinement punishment in drug offenses introduced by the new drug law of 2006. Estimates of treatment-effects, conditional on case characteristics and panel-specific fixed-effects, confirm that career judges respond favorably to defendants, in line with the jurisprudence shift. Former prosecutors react against the shift, responding unfavorably to defendants. Former lawyers tend to exhibit a mixed behavior, weighing in their preferences as well as strategically favoring predominant “law and order” views. Finally sitting judges behave in a diffident fashion but also favoring prosecution.

European Criminal Bar Association statement of principles on the use of video-conferencing in criminal cases in a Post-Covid-19 World

This is a statement by the European Criminal Bar Association on the use of Video-Conferencing in Criminal Cases in a Post-Covid-19 World. It addresses the topic using a two-fold distinction between the use of remote hearings in domestic and in cross-border cases, on one hand, and the use of such of remote technology for conducting interviews of the suspect or accused in the pre-trial stages or at trial hearings, on the other hand. Recognising that these distinctive settings impact differently upon the seriousness of the interference with the fair trial rights and the rights of defence of the suspect or accused, and also upon the circumstances that must be weighed in order to assess whether restrictions are proportionate, adequate and necessary, the European Criminal Bar Association assesses whether the use of remote technologies in those different settings is acceptable and outlines proposals for further action in the field.

Judecătorul și fabulistul orheian Alecu Donici, precursor al etnologiei juridice românești

"Paul Valéry said about fables as follows: “Little by little those who loved or liked it, those who were able to understand it disappear. Those who demanded it, those who broke it, those who bantered it died too ... Soon, an instrument of pleasure and emotion will become a school accessory; what used to constitute the truth, what used to constitute the beauty turns into a means of constraint or into an object that arouses curiosity, but a curiosity which forces itself to be curious."" (""Oraison funèbre d´une fable"", in Variétés, apud Sanda Radian, Măștile fabulei. Etape de evoluție în literatura română (The Fable Masks. Stages of Evolution in Romanian Literature), Minerva Publishing House, Bucharest, 1983, p. 5) In a recent conference, held in Suceava[1], I expressed some regrets in relation to the absence of scientific concerns in the vast and important field of legal ethnography and ethnology in Romania, as follows: ""Legal ethnography and ethnology are not obviously, in particular, delimited in Simeon Florea Marian's grandiose work. General science was in the course of being established; it was not the time for particularistic developments. It was late when by means of another pioneering work, that of the Romanian scholar and anthropologist Romulus Vulcănescu, some issues of concern for our jurists, for law sociologists and anthropologists started to be reflected in the Romanian legal culture. Very few. Even the great ethnologist Petru Ursache acknowledged that the domain was deficient, in his very impressive creation of ethnosophy"". ⁂ As for the fable, apparently a minor literary genre, so much lamented, as we have seen above, by Paul Valéry, as an object of historical contemplation only, the intersection of the legal culture with the sapiential, moral and literary spirit of the people increases considerably; so much that it becomes a valuable scientific landmark in the emergent legal ethnology twinned with legal sociology, with legal anthropology and with legal folklore[2]. In the most serious way, even if, isn’t it true, with hilarious and caricaturizing weapons, with a playful and clever spirit, the fable decrypts a people's propensity for truth and justice or, conversely, for gregarious fatalism in relation to the vices that corrupt the nation psychologically and morally. Its role is didactic. The young jurists would become scientifically and culturally ennobled if they took over the case law, the ""cases"", from the fables ... Or if, their masters guided them towards associating the case law with the comic and fabulising spirit of the wise judge ... [1] Pagini de etnografie juridico-morală în opera fondatoare a bucovineanului polimat Simeon Florea Marian, cronicar al sufletelor românești în pragul Marii Uniri. Remarcabila lui contribuție la înfăptuirea milenarului ideal (Pages of legal-moral ethnography in the founding work of the polymath from Bucovina Simeon Florea Marian, chronicler of Romanian souls on the verge of the Great Union. His remarkable contribution to the achievement of the ideal millennial), conference held during the Scientific Session ""The contribution of the lawyers from Bucovina to the accomplishment of the Great Union"", November 28, 2018, ""Stefan cel Mare"" University from Suceava & Suceava Bar Association. The text of the conference was delivered for publication in ""Analale Muzeului Memorial Simion Florea Marian” from Suceava, under the guidance of Mrs. Aura Brădățan, 2019. [2] Romulus Vulcănescu, Etnologie juridică (Legal Ethnology), Editura Academiei, Bucharest, 1970, p. 9 : ""The following subjects deal with the study of the legal aspects of primitive and popular civilization and culture as constitutive parts of the conception about existence and the world and of the ways of normative organization of life, partially and with unequal theoretical resources: ""legal geography"", ""legal anthropology"", ""legal sociology"" and ""legal ethnology"". """

Legal Society Service of Pro-Bono on Migrant in Morocco in Law Perspective

Morocco is a constitutional, democratic and social monarchy. The King is the Supreme Representative of the Nation and the Symbol of the unity thereof. He is the guarantor of the perpetuation and the continuity of the State. As Defender of the Faith, he ensures the respect for the Constitution. He is the Protector of the rights and liberties of the citizens, social groups and organizations. System Barriers to Pro Bono work result from the social environment of the judiciary and, more specifically, from the current practice of law in Morocco. The population generally has a low regard for the legal and judicial sector, and expects corruption in the judiciary. In Morocco, legal information is also not adequately disseminated to the public.[1] In addition, the low literacy rate 52.3% for the total population (39.6% for women, 65.7% for men) renders access to justice all the more difficult. A substantial proportion of the population is therefore vulnerable and may fall prey to unethical behavior. The Bar Association has great difficulty in supervising “homeless” lawyers, who are lawyers with no fixed business address and operate with a cellular telephone from undisclosed premises. Up to 800 of the 3,000 lawyers registered with the Casablanca Bar Association are reportedly “homeless” lawyers, who prey on the uninformed and often maintain frivolous suits in order to collect higher fees.[1] US Department of State, 2004 census <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5431.htm accessed on January 10, 2021