THE DISCIPLINARY PROCESSES OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION

The legal profession in England and Wales has a long established approach to the regulation of lawyers’ behaviour. This is built on investigation and prosecution of disciplinary breaches by the professional bodies, with more serious cases being brought before disciplinary tribunals. These tribunals have wide disciplinary powers, including the ultimate sanction of striking off or disbarring offenders or re-admitting offenders after a period of time. The establishment of the Legal Services Board (LSB), with regulatory oversight for the legal professions, by the Legal Services Act 2007 focused attention on approaches to regulation and led to a switch in the emphasis of regulation from the individual to firms (or ‘entities’). The appointment of independent regulators of the professions suggested that there might be significant changes in regulatory philosophy and strategy. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) acquired powers to administer small fines on individual solicitors. It also promised to practise ‘risk based regulation’. It adopted a system of ‘outcomes focused regulation’ (OFR) based on a structure of auditing systems and processes. It was anticipated that these changes would drive changes in professional regulation. This research establishes a baseline for assessing these changes. It locates the work of the disciplinary tribunals for solicitors and barristers in the wider context of legal services regulation. It then provides a detailed analysis of all the disciplinary tribunal cases for the main legal professions heard in 2008. This analysis focuses on processes of investigation and prosecution, on the characteristics of respondents before the disciplinary tribunals, such as age, sex and institutional affiliations, the processing of cases and the imposition of sanctions

George Washington’s Attorneys: The Political Selection of United States Attorneys at the Founding

This Article examines the relationship between the Nation’s first President and the selection of United States Attorneys. It argues that politics played an important, if not primary, role in the President’s selections. George Washington sought those who would represent the government’s interests, adhere to the government’s policies, and advance Washington’s political goals. His selections also demonstrated Washington’s requirement of loyalty to America. In this respect, the politicization of United States Attorneys occurred at the outset. Part I of this Article defines politicization and identifies its four aspects. Part II describes the United States Attorney position as understood through the 1789 Judiciary Act and state experience. Part III examines how Washington’s selections and selection process included three of the four politicization categories. The concluding Section briefly explores the ramifications of politicization and its potential benefits in today’s prosecutorial environmen

Mining the Web for Law Related Jobs in Intellectual Property in the United States

Intellectual property law has remained the hottest practice group for over a decade; it is one of the fastest-growing and most exciting fields today. The trend was clearly recognized as early as 1995 in an article Lesley Ellen Harris. 2 As far back as 1997, according to The National Law Journal, IP has been reported to be the most highly compensated segment of the legal profession for both trial and non-trial attorneys. 3 This article examines the process of finding IP jobs on the web

Justice Data Base Directory

The Justice Data Base Directory was originally published in 1988 with an introduction, 8 chapters describing Alaska justice agencies and their data holdings, and an index. It was published in looseleaf notebook format for easy updating. Four updates were published in 1989–1992, each update consisting of additional chapters, revised table of contents and index, and updates to existing pages to reflect changes such as agency addresses. Five chapters were added in 1989; five in 1990; four in 1991; and five in 1992, for a total of 27 agencies covered by the Justice Data Base Directory in its final form. For archival purposes, this record includes all five versions of the directory. The 1992 edition is the most complete.The Justice Data Base Directory, first published in 1988 with new chapters added annually through 1992, presents information about the primary databases maintained by Alaska justice agencies and the procedures to be followed for access to the data. Its availability should substantially reduce the work required to identify the sources of data for research and policy development in law, law enforcement, courts, and corrections. The 1992 update to the directory adds five chapters, for a total of 27 Alaska agencies whose justice-related data holdings are described: Alaska Court System; Alaska Judicial Council; Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct; Alaska Department of Law; Alaska Department of Public Safety (DPS) and three agencies under DPS: Alaska Police Standards Council, Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault (CDSA), and Violent Crimes Compensation Board; Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) and Parole Board; four agencies of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services — Bureau of Vital Statistics (Division of Public Health), Epidemiology Section (Division of Public Health), Division of Family and Youth Services, and Office of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse; Alaska Public Defender Agency; Office of Public Advocacy (OPA); Alaska Bar Association; Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Unit; Alaska Office of Equal Employment Opportunity (Office of the Governor); Alaska Office of the Ombudsman; Alaska Legal Services Corporation; Alaska Public Offices Commission; Alaska State Commission for Human Rights; Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) Board; Legislative Research Agency; Legislative Affairs Agency; State Archives and Records Management Services (Alaska Department of Education). Fully indexed.Funded in part by a grant from the Bureau of Justice Statistics.1. Introduction / 2. Alaska Court System / 3. Alaska Department of Law / 4. Alaska Department of Public Safety / 5. Alaska Department of Corrections / 6. Division of Family and Youth Services, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services / 7. Alaska Bar Association / 8. Alaska Judicial Council / 9. Alaska Justice Statistical Analysis Unit / 10. Bureau of Vital Statistics, Division of Public Health, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services / 11. Alaska Office of Equal Employment Opportunity, Office of the Governor / 12. Office of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services / 13. Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Alaska Department of Public Safety / 14. Epidemiology Section, Division of Public Health, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services / 15. Violent Crimes Compensation Board, Alaska Department of Public Safety / 16. Alaska Police Standards Council, Alaska Department of Public Safety / 17. Alcoholic Beverage Control Board / 18. Alaska Office of the Ombudsman / 19. State Archives and Records Management Services, Alaska Department of Education / 20. Legislative Research Agency / 21. Legislative Affairs Agency / 22. Alaska State Commission for Human Rights / 23. Parole Board, Alaska Department of Corrections / 24. Alaska Public Offices Commission / 25. Alaska Commission on Judicial Conduct / 26. Alaska Legal Services Corporation / 27. Office of Public Advocacy / 28. Alaska Public Defender Agency / 29. Inde

Family Legal Services Review Submission on Unbundling & Legal Coaching

Legal coaching is a form of unbundling that, as Justice Bonkalo notes, “is uniquely characterized by the lawyer equipping the client to move his or her own matter forward (by reviewing documents, preparing them for an appearance, etc.) rather than personally doing the work for the client.” While the practice of legal coaching is not new – lawyers have been doing this informally for years – the term “coaching” was coined by Dr. Julie Macfarlane in her groundbreaking 2013 National Study on SRLs, which included interviews or focus groups with 259 SRLs from Alberta, British Columbia, and Ontario, as well as with 107 court staff and service providers. A great deal of attention has been paid to Dr. Macfarlane’s findings regarding motivation, challenges and impact. I will not review these findings in detail, but I observe in summary that the number one reason respondents provided for being self-represented was cost, the main challenge they reported was dealing with the complexity of the system, and the biggest impact they experienced was the extreme stress and anxiety of navigating this complex system on their own.

E-Court Management System for Mahkamah Sesyen and Magistrate lpoh

In this project paper, the Court Management System project is still under planning phases where the objective and the scope of the project has been design. E-Court Management System is web based system that integrates four components which is Content Management Service, Contact Management Service, Case Management System and Transaction Service. With the objective and scope has been define, the development of this project can continue with analysis phases and development phases. The requirement of the project also being define on the project to make sure it comply with the objective, scope and project development life cycle. This website system include all five project development life cycle because it consider as critical website system. The five project development life cycle is initiation and feasibility study, planning, analysis, design and development and the last one is testing and implementation. In each phase, there were several steps taken according to few methodologies to achieve the objective of the phase. The result of this project soon will be a fully functioning E-Court Management System according to the new business flow which meet the objective of the project and solve the problem in existing system as well

For Your Dining Pleasure: A Menu of Legal Websites

The focus of this paper is to explore websites that you may find helpful in your daily work and research. There are 40 featured websites drawn from governmental, educational, and commercial information resources. Consider these websites a good jumping off point to familiarize yourself with the types of information available to assist you in your Internet legal research needs