Transforming the legal profession: an interview study of change managers in law

A lively debate progresses about change to the professions, including law, especially change in the form of managerialism. ‘Managerialism’ covers the methods and beliefs of managers within organisations, used to actively influence, evaluate, and ‘market’ professional work. But what about when that managerialism is change itself? How do we understand managerialism-as-change? This paper reports on an interview study with change managers, or ‘transformation leaders’ in the legal profession. Transformation leaders offer rich insights into the dynamics of professional change because they are incontrovertibly change agents. They are also themselves a form of managerial change as a new cadre of managers within the professions; managers with ‘hybrid’ identities whose legitimacy in professional settings is not assured. The findings presented include: the change leaders’ identities; the types of change being introduced; the constraints on and affordances for change in legal practices; and how change leaders secure, and sometimes struggle to secure, the authority needed to implement change. The concluding discussion highlights the study's contributions to our understanding of professional change and managerialism in the legal context – both what changes are being pursued and how they are materialising through certain ‘managerial’ goals, strategies, and the interactions of those with mixed identities and status.

World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action

The World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action is an open letter from and to the global legal community, calling for the mainstreaming of climate concerns throughout the law and legal profession. It seeks to rethink and redefine the role and responsibilities of lawyers in the climate crisis, and invites lawyers of all kinds –including practitioners, judges, scholars, civil servants, law students, and lawmakers –to integrate climate concerns into their respective areas of expertise and work. The magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis require all lawyers, not just environmental lawyers, to be part of the solution and contribute to climate-protective legal development. The Pledge can be endorsed and signed at http://www.lawyersclimatepledge.org.

International Negotiation Competition For Law Students: National Rounds Outward Glance

Language is an essential instrument for many professionals and lawyers are among those who occupy the first lines. The lawyers use the language to address the court, interview a client, negotiate a contract or a dispute. Communicative competence is crucial for the legal profession and participating in competitions for law students is one of the ways to foster and master it alongside taking traditional classes and courses. The article gives a brief overview of existing international competitions for law students and aims at finding ways of improving the International Negotiation Competition (INC) national rounds organization. This goal is approached by conducting a survey among former participants of INC national rounds in Russia and Norway and analyzing its results. The conclusions prompted are as follows: to conduct timely surveys among all participates, to engage former participants in national rounds organization, to work out new rules for holding online events.

Persistence Despite Change: The Academic Gender Gap in Australian Law Schools

Prior research has shown that while women have entered the legal profession in increasing numbers, the profession continues to privilege the norms, beliefs, and cultural practices of men. However, one aspect of the legal profession that has largely been overlooked, especially in Australia, is legal academia. This oversight is significant as legal academia provides the gateway into the legal profession. Women now make up approximately half of universities’ academic staff, are increasingly completing doctorate qualifications, and are moving into senior positions within academia. On the surface, these changes may suggest that women are now fully integrated into academia and that the academic gender gap has now resolved. We argue, however, that numerical inclusion does not necessarily challenge the male normative structures that underlie legal academia. This article draws on analysis of the biographies of seven hundred legal academics in Australian law schools and investigates differences between male and female legal academics in terms of level of appointment, academic qualifications and professional experience, research productivity, research interests, and mobility. It shows that while the gender gap has closed in some areas, the feminization of legal academia is a myth and female academics continue to face gendered barriers.

Kompleksitas Penegakkan Hukum Ekonomi Di Era Reformasi

Issues that are understood about law relating to the nature of law are made to regulate the order of people's lives so that they are orderly and regularly. Order and regular will not be realized if the rule of law cannot be enforced. The implications of legal regulation in the economic field are various regulatory instruments that affect economic performance, in order to achieve human welfare, both in the short and long term. In this case, the law position is trying to provide a reflection for the creation of an economic justice. Awareness of the need to understand the economic consequences of implementing a rule has actually begun to be discussed, so from this illustration it becomes an argument about the Complexity of Enforcement of Economic Law in the Reformation Era. The aim is to reveal the meaning of a legal action based on law enforcement in the economic field as well as to identify the relationship between variables. Thus, this research produces descriptive data which must be interpreted using qualitative methods. Because this article seeks to provide an explanation of the continuity and integrity of the science and philosophy of law. The reasons that underlie industrial countries and developing countries such as Indonesia, regard the enforcement of economic law as very important, namely program effectiveness, reasons for justice, reasons for credibility, and reasons for efficiency. The phenomenon of economic instability in the reform era is a reflection that management in the economic sector has not fully become our collective commitment, a reductionist and exploitative way of thinking has developed to color the administration of government in the reform era. Enforcement of economic law is actually a preventive or repressive effort in overcoming price volatility and market mechanisms. Law enforcement as a concept that is expected to be one of the foundations for achieving Indonesia's vision in 2030, economic law enforcement occupies an important position to be prioritized because of the vital functions it contains. This concept is an interface between the legal system and the economic system in an effort to realize legal and economic development as a series of stages of nation building. The development of economic law, enforcement in the reform era that its implications for legal institutions and the legal profession. Therefore, it is a challenge for the Indonesian nation in the reform era to find a solution in addition to the challenges of the legal profession, economic actors, and other related professions. In meeting these challenges, an attitude that we need to develop together is openness and “intellectual humility”, realizing that we will be more successful in making contributions if we work together in an interdisciplinary manner. Keywords: Law enforcement, law approach to the economy.

Divergent Opinions Regarding Appointment of Academics to Judicial Offices in Nigeria: A Socio-Legal Approach

Competence of academics to become judges has attracted divergent opinions among legal scholars. Intellectually academics have been conducting researches and disseminating the findings of the works in journals. Outside the four walls of the universities, the scholars are helping courts to appreciate difficult legal issues by filing scholars’ brief. They appear before the courts as friends or amici curiae. In the United States, it is a tradition to appoint academics as judges, and there is similar practice in various parts of the world. Nigeria is one of the countries where academics were elevated to become judicial officers or judges of Superior Courts. Late Justice Teslim Elias was an academic appointed as a judicial officer. There are opinions for and against appointment of members of the academia into judicial offices. Proponents of the appointment believe that academics are suitable to be appointed as judges by virtue of their knowledge. On the other hand, those against such appointment are of the view that the academics lack practical experience in the courtroom. This reason makes them unqualified to be appointed judges. This paper has adopted a socio-legal research approach to understand the perspectives for and against appointing academics as judges. Nine members of the legal profession have been interviewed and majority of them have supported the appointment.