This volume reviews and takes stock of legal ethics, at a time when the legal profession globally is experiencing considerable change and challenges, through a re-evaluation of writings that are in some way foundational to the field. Legal ethics, understood here as the study of the ethics and professional regulation of lawyers, has emerged as a novel and important field of study over the last 50 years. It is also one that displays considerable diversity in its scholarship, with distinctive philosophical and interdisciplinary approaches emerging over the years to underpin and supplement the doctrinal ‘law on lawyering’. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars from the United States, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, this collection offers not just critical insights into the authors’ chosen texts, but a thought-provoking commentary on the current state of legal ethics scholarship and its future directions. In addition to being an essential resource for scholars and students of legal ethics theory, it will also be of interest to academics and researchers in legal theory, the philosophy of law, and applied ethics.
- Introduction: Surfing the Waves of Legal Ethics Scholarship
- Community, Goodness and Solidarity in Legal Ethics
- The Lost Lawyer Regained – Virtue, Liberalism and Citizenship in Lawyers’ Ethics
- Human Dignity as the Ground of Legal Ethics: The Lawyer’s Role Revisited, from
- Back to Basics, and Beyond Belief: The Radical Re-Valuation Project of the New
- The Fragility of Legal Ethics: On the Role of Theory, Lawyerly Virtues, and Moral
- Repentence: Did Atticus Defend Jim Crow?
- The Ghost of the Profession's Past
- In Search of Public Interest Lawyering: What Does it Take to Give Practical
- Race Matters: White Dispatches from the Professional Front
- Revisiting Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority: An Engaged Followership
- James Rest’s Four Component Model (FCM): A Case for its Central Place in
- Not the End of Lawyers, But a Beginning—The Place of Entrepreneurship and
Julian Webb and Nicola Hard
Part I: Philosophies Revisited
W Bradley Wendel
Reid Mortensen
Luban to Levinas
Julian Webb
Standard Conception
Rob Atkinson
Remainders in the Life of a Good Lawyer
Iris van Domselaar
Tim Dare
Part II – Diverse Origins - New Directions
Rebecca Roiphe
Content to Better Professional Norms?
Richard Moorhead and Steven Vaughan
Allan C Hutchinson
Perspective on Legal Ethics
Tigran W Eldred
Legal Ethics
Justine Rogers and Hugh Breakey
Innovation in Legal Ethics
Renee Knake Jefferson and Russell G Pearce
Biography
Julian Webb is a Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne, Australia
“Informative, inspiring and ambitious, Leading Works is a landmark work in legal ethics. The care and effort put in by Webb, as editor, and the chapter authors shines through. The wide-ranging and thought-provoking territory that the book covers make it an invaluable resource to both newcomers and established contributors to the field alike.”
Amy Salyzyn, New Kid No Longer: Tracing Legal Ethics’ Growth and Charting its Future, JOTWELL (January 29, 2025) (reviewing Julian Webb (editor), Leading Works in Legal Ethics (2024)), https://legalpro.jotwell.com/new-kid-no-longer-tracing-legal-ethics-growth-and-charting-its-future/.
