The New Lawyer
Note: A newer, Second Edition of The New Lawyer is now available.
An adversarial “client warrior” image dominates historical notions of the lawyer, and a commitment to “zealous advocacy” remains one of the core norms of the legal model. Yet structural changes within both the justice system and the legal profession have rendered the “warrior” notion outdated and inadequate, with a shift toward conflict resolution rather than protracted litigation.
The new lawyer’s skills go beyond court battles to encompass negotiation, mediation, collaborative practice, and restorative justice. In The New Lawyer, Julie Macfarlane explores the evolving role of practitioners, articulating legal and ethical complexities in a variety of contexts drawn from Canadian and American legal literature as well as from her own empirical research. The result is a thought-provoking exploration of the increasing impact of alternative, consensus-seeking strategies on the lawyer-client relationship, as well as on the legal system itself.
The New Lawyer will be of interest to lawyers, law professors, law students, members of professional regulatory bodies, mediators, justice officials, and anyone who works with lawyers.
The New Lawyer is the first book to thoroughly research and describe the massive changes in the legal profession and practice in the last three decades, and to make a serious attempt to predict what will happen in the decades to follow … an outstanding effort. Readers will not be disappointed.
The Justice system is ever changing and Ms. MacFarlane has enunciated some constructive alternatives to the public concept of lawyers as courtroom battlers. The author outlines the new lawyer who has shifted strategy to also consider mediation and restorative justice. The book is useful to trial lawyers in that it outlines how to benefit by learning how to best use these options.
Professor Julie Macfarlane is onto something here. As she does in the Preface to The New Lawyer, I too would recommend this book not only to those lawyers who may be disillusioned with what she calls the ‘warrior mentality ’ of legal practice but also to lawyers who may be sceptical of the alternative legal image […] Macfarlane ’s compromise convergence produces a happy hybrid that many lawyers can relate to and already see within themselves — a lawyer who is both a fighter and a settler and who helps the client both engage with conflict and make a ‘game plan for victory.’
It is a researched and learned discussion and is an extremely valuable […] book for anyone wanting to understand the broad changes in advanced western democracies which have been and are still happening. It highlights some issues and tensions which will impact how best to carry out your role as a New Lawyer. […] On the whole the book is thought provoking […]. I do not know of any other attempt to deal with the whole issue so well. Ms. Macfarlane is to be congratulated.
The legal profession needs a wake-up call, and The New Lawyer resoundingly provides it. Macfarlane persuasively critiques the outmoded habits of the profession and lays a strong foundation for the new settlement-oriented, problem-solving approach to lawyering.
A provocative and hopeful vision of the ‘new lawyer’ who has chosen to embrace a more inclusive calling … With Macfarlane’s guidance, it may be possible to reclaim the pragmatic nobility of the legal profession.
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Changes in the Legal Profession and the Emergence of the New Lawyer
2 Constructing Professional Identity
3 Three Key Professional Beliefs
4 Translating the Beliefs into Practice: The Norms of Legal Negotiations
5 The New Advocacy
6 The Lawyer-Client Relationship
7 The Role of the Law and Legal Advice
8 Ethical Challenges Facing the New Lawyer
9 Where the Action Is: Sites of Change
Epilogue
Notes
Index
