Attorneys in transformation. Some brief notes about organisation and deontology

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO
Author/s Luigi Cominelli
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2014/3
Language Italian Pages 9 P. 171-179 File size 63 KB
DOI 10.3280/SD2014-003009
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

The legal profession is undergoing transformation and we are currently experiencing a period when this transformation is overwhelming, especially in Italy. The public’s perception of the attorney’s social role generates expectations about the ethical and deontological standards we require from the profession. Put to the test of everyday reality, betrayed expectations generate a generalised hostility towards attorneys as a class, although this does not translate systematically into bad attorney- client relationships. It is also true that the legal profession has been put under pressure, like the administration of justice as a whole, by international benchmarks that measure the efficiency of the system of justice. Two aspects loom large in empirical analyses of attorneys: the profession’s organisational dimension and its deontological self-regulation. For a clientele of repeat players, legal services have been transformed into a commodity. Clients demand speed and competitive pricing and do not hesitate to encourage competition between attorneys, as a way of achieving better offers by beating their fees down. The profession is now overloaded with social expectations, a slave to formalism and unbalanced towards remedies. The client-individual is paradoxically a purely metaphysical concept, because the lawyer’s training does not contemplate any mention of the ability to relate, to negotiate or to communicate.

Keywords: Attorneys, Forensic deontology, Forensic order

  1. —, 2012b, Why Context Matters. In Levin. & Mather 2012a. Macfarlane, Julie, 2008. The New Lawyer: How Settlement Is Transforming the Practice of Law. Vancouver -Toronto: UBC Press.
  2. Marchesi, Daniela, 2003. Litiganti, avvocati e magistrati. Diritto ed economia del processo civile. Bologna: il Mulino.
  3. —, 2009, Lo sguardo dell’economista: le ricadute sul sistema paese. In Centro nazionale di prevenzione e difesa sociale (cura red. di C. Beria di Argentine), La crisi della giustizia civile in Italia: che fare?, Milano: Giuffrè.
  4. Mather, Lynn, & Craig A. McEwen, 2012. Client Grievances and Lawyer Conduct: The Challenges of Divorce Practice. In Levin, Leslie C., & Lynn Mather, 2012a.
  5. Menkel-Meadow, Carrie, 2013. Doing Good Instead of Doing Well? What Lawyers Could Be Doing in a World of ‘Too Many’ Lawyers, http://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2269818.
  6. Parker, Christine, & Adrian Evans, 2007. Inside Lawyers’ Ethics. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
  7. Prandstraller, Gian Paolo, 1967. Gli avvocati italiani. Inchiesta sociologica. Milano: Edizioni di Comunità.
  8. —, 1981, Avvocati e metropoli. Inchiesta sulla professione di avvocato nell’area lombarda. Milano: FrancoAngeli.
  9. Pue, W. Wesley, & David Sugarman, 2003. Introduction: Towards a Cultural History of Lawyers. In W. Wesley Pue & David Sugarman, Lawyers and Vampires. Cultural Histories of Legal Professions, Oxford - Portland [OR]: Hart Publishing.
  10. Resta, Eligio, 1999. Giudicare, conciliare, mediare. Politica del diritto, 4.
  11. Siegrist, Hannes, 2003. Juridicalisation, Professionalisation and the Occupational Culture of the Advocate in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Centuries: A Comparison of Germany, Italy and Switzerland. In W. Wesley Pue & David Sugarman 2003.
  12. Smigel, Erwin O., 1958. Interviewing a Legal Elite: The Wall Street Lawyer. American Journal of Sociology, 64, 2.
  13. Stipanowich, Thomas J., 2010. Arbitration: The “New Litigation”. University of Illinois Law Review, 1.
  14. Tomeo, Vincenzo, 1973. Il giudice sullo schermo. Magistratura e polizia nel cinema italiano. Bari: Laterza.
  15. Wilkins, David B., 2012. Some Realism about Legal Realism for Lawyers: Assessing the Role of Context in Legal Ethics. In Levin & Mather 2012a.
  16. Levin, Leslie C., & Lynn Mather, 2012a. Lawyers in Practice. Ethical Decision Making in Context. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
  17. Kim, Sung Hui, 2012. The Ethics of In-house Practice. In Levin & Mather 2012a.
  18. —, 1995. Merchants of Law as Moral Entrepreneurs: Constructing International Justice from the Competition for Transnational Business Disputes. Law and Society Review, 29.
  19. Dezalay, Yves, & Brian Garth, 1998. Dealing in Virtue. International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  20. Dezalay, Yves, 1997. I mercanti del diritto. Le multinazionali del diritto e la ristrutturazione dell’ordine giuridico internazionale. Milano: Giuffrè.
  21. Daniels, Stephen, & Joanne Martin, 2012. Plaintiffs’ Lawyers and the Tension between Professional Norms and the Need to Generate Business. In Levin & Mather, 2012a..
  22. Chambliss, Elizabeth, 2012. Whose Ethics? The Benchmark Problem in Legal Ethics Research. In Levin & Mather 2012a.
  23. Bordone, Dafne, 2010. Procedimenti disciplinari a carico di avvocati: un’indagine presso l’Ordine degli avvocati di Milano. Sociologia del diritto, 1.
  24. Bergoglio, María Inés, 2005. Segmentación en la profesión jurídica: cambios ocupacionales de los abogados argentinos, 1995-2003. Academia: Revista sobre enseñanza del derecho, 5.
  25. Bastard, Benoît, 1985. Les avocats à Genève: une analyse sociologique du changement dans la profession d’avocat. Sociologia del diritto, 1.
  26. Baccomo, Federico, 2009. Studio illegale. Milano: Marsilio.
  27. Alpa, Guido, 2008. L’avvocato. I nuovi volti della professione forense nell’età della globalizzazione. Bologna: il Mulino.

Luigi Cominelli, Avvocati in trasformazione. note brevi su organizzazione e deontologia in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL DIRITTO " 3/2014, pp 171-179, DOI: 10.3280/SD2014-003009