Inside Lawyers' Ethics

Christine Parker is a Professor in the Centre for Regulatory Studies and Law Faculty at Monash University. She has previously held appointments at the University of Melbourne and University of Melbourne Law Schools. She teaches and researches on lawyers' ethics and the regulation of the legal profession, corporate social responsibility and business regulation and enforcement, and the politics and regulation of food. Her other books include Just Lawyers: Regulation and Access to Justice (1997), The Open Corporation: Effective Self-Regulation and Democracy (2002) and the edited collections Regulating Law (2004) and Explaining Compliance: Business Responses to Regulation (2012). Adrian Evans has taught, practised law and consulted in a clinical and practical legal education context for twenty-five years at La Trobe and Monash Universities, Australia. He was coordinator of Springvale Monash Legal Service Inc. from 1988 to 2000, the largest Australian clinical program. He is both an academic and a legal practitioner, with teaching and managerial responsibilities in legal ethics, justice education, clinical case supervision and practical legal training. He has empirically examined and published in relation to 'best practice' ethics in law firms, 'quality' clinical-traditional links in law teaching, client attitudes to lawyers, the values of legal practitioners, the approaches of IBA members to monitoring and controlling defalcations and the ethical environment in which lawyer's fidelity compensation is addressed locally and internationally. Adrian has been closely involved in the development of the Global Alliance for Justice Education (GAJE) and is currently researching systemic opportunities to secure the ethical future of the legal profession through enhanced processes of assessment and accreditation. Adrian is a recipient of the Monash Vice-Chancellor's Award for Distinguished Teaching and is a former Associate Dean (Staff) at Monash Law School.

1. Introduction: values in practice; 2. Alternatives to adversarial advocacy; 3. The responsibility climate: professionalism and the regulation of lawyers' ethics; 4. Confidentiality: boundaries and disclosure; 5. Ethics in criminal justice: proof and truth; 6. Civics litigation and excessive adversarialism; 7. Ethics negotiation and alternative dispute resolution; 8. Conflicting loyalties; 9. Lawyers' fees and costs: billing and over-charging; 10. Corporate lawyers and corporate misconduct; 11. Conclusion – personal professionalism: virtue, values and legal professionalism.