Regulation of the Legal Profession: The Essentials
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Description
Regulation of the Legal Profession: The Essentials illuminates key concepts with Stephen Gillers’ characteristic expertise and clarity. It features: an informal writing style that is engaging and concise; illuminating discussion of the central themes and overarching framework of professional responsibility; a logical and modular organization that may be referenced or taught in any order; cross-referencing that connects related themes and concepts, contributing to a cohesive overview of legal ethics. The word essentials is in the title of this book. It fairly describes the content. This is not a treatise, not a heavily footnoted law review article, not a law professor’s extended excursion into the intellectual or historical explanations for the subject. The book is a reflective introduction to the major and minor rules and themes in the law and ethics governing the behavior of American lawyers. As its guide, it uses the American Bar Association Model Rules (where ethics rules are the subject) and cases from various jurisdictions. Material on the legal liability of lawyers relies on case law. The endeavor required selections, and selection always requires judgment. What to include. What to omit. I have tried to balance the interest in coverage and depth against the goal of avoiding excessive detail. Each of the chapters discusses a discrete area of legal ethics. More or less. Choosing the focus of each of the chapters itself required judgment. I don’t expect that most readers will likely read the book from beginning to end, though some will. More likely, readers will look at one chapter or another as their own interest directs them at the time. For that reason, I have cross-referenced chapters. Subtitles to each chapter identify the chapter’s main themes. There is minor duplication across chapters when a subject could properly be raised in more than one place footnoting is light but sufficient, I hope, to enable a reader who wants to pursue a question to being further research. I have tried to make the book conversational, personal, and accessible. Much legal writing is just the opposite, reasonably so, perhaps, given the differences in purpose or audience. This assignment, however, offered a chance for a casual and distinct voice—even the first-person singular when useful—and I have taken advantage of the opportunity. Readers are invited (indeed urged) to drop me a note if there are issues not addressed, in their view. Should the book go into a second edition, all suggestions will receive serious consideration.
Publication Date
2009
Edition
1
Recommended Citation
Gillers, Stephen, "Regulation of the Legal Profession: The Essentials" (2009). Faculty Books & Edited Works. 299.
https://gretchen.law.nyu.edu/fac-books-edited-works/299
