The Role of Prosecutors in Serving Justice After Convictions

It is an old saw that prosecutors have both an ethical and a legal obligation to do justice. The contours of that obligation, however, are not well defined. This Article addresses one particularly neglected aspect of the obligation: prosecutors\u27 ethical duty to serve justice after convictions are complete. Prosecutorial justice issues seem to arise less frequently after conviction than at trial. Prosecutorial discretion is at its height in the postconviction context because legislators and professional code drafters have not focused on postconviction issues. Freed from binding legal constraints, prosecutors have avoided deep consideration of how their general obligation to serve justice might apply. Once defendants have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, prosecutors\u27 natural inclination in balancing the equities has been to sidestep defense-oriented actions

Why the Bar Needs Academics - and Vice Versa

This Article argues that practicing attorneys have a need for academics to bring the their legal approaches back to a sense of reality. The author makes this argument by giving three examples of personal experience at a recent symposium sponsored by the University of Arizona College of Law, entitled The Future Structure and Regulation of Law Practice. The author claims that sometimes practitioners are blinded by their own traditions and refused to consider new and better approaches. Academics who have less at stake in existing traditions are more willing to consider new solutions

Understanding Recent Trends in Federal Regulation of Lawyers

Federal lawmakers increasingly have taken actions that contradict, interfere with, or preempt state regulation of lawyers. Most of the commentary regarding the recent federal actions has focused on whether individual regulations are substantively justified. It is, however, worth considering more broadly whether and how the phenomenon of increasing federal regulation is symptomatic of changing views of appropriate professional regulation. This article considers a series of theoretical analyses of the increasing federal regulation -- themes and trends that the increasing regulation might represent or epitomize. Whenever the bar or other commentators criticize developments in professional regulation, it is important to place their criticisms in context. Only by placing the federal reforms in the context of the broader analytic themes can we begin to evaluate their actual and potential significance. The article concludes that no single explanation for the reforms is possible. They do not neatly fit a uniform pattern that reflects an overarching change in regulatory approaches or in society’s attitudes towards the relative merits of state and federal regulation. They do, however, suggest a series of questions about traditional regulation that the federal actors have opened for discussion. The best view of recent events is that they have begun a process of negotiation with respect to particular substantive issues, potential new approaches, and the relative competence of different institutions to regulate different aspects of legal practice

Effects of Reputation on the Legal Profession

This Article considers how the reputation of lawyers and signaling between lawyers and clients affects the impact of legal ethics rules. Academics who have written about the relationships between lawyers and clients have not adequately considered the influence of reputational signaling on who clients hire and on lawyers\u27 implementation of discretion. These empirical issues are key to a proper analysis of many professional rules and to the approach bar associations should take to matching lawyers and clients. The Article will focus primarily on lawyers\u27 reputations as a proxy for what clients want, or need, to know about their representatives. Part I offers a taxonomy of the ways in which lawyers\u27 reputations are important. Part II discusses what we do, and do not, know about lawyers\u27 reputations in today\u27s real world. Part III identifies a series of questions about reputation that academics and the bar should consider more seriously than they have in the past