In the Interests of clients or commerce? Legal aid, supply, demand, and 'ethical indeterminacy' in criminal defence work

As a professional, a lawyer's first duty is to serve the client's best interests, before simple monetary gain. In criminal defence work, this duty has been questioned in the debate about the causes of growth in legal aid spending: is it driven by lawyers (suppliers) inducing unnecessary demand for their services or are they merely responding to increased demand? Research reported here found clear evidence of a change in the handling of cases in response to new payment structures, though in ways unexpected by the policy's proponents. The paper develops the concept of 'ethical indeterminacy' as a way of understanding how defence lawyers seek to reconcile the interests of commerce and clients. Ethical indeterminacy suggests that where different courses of action could each be said to benefit the client, the lawyer will tend to advise the client to decide in the lawyer's own interests. Ethical indeterminacy is mediated by a range of competing conceptions of 'quality' and 'need'. The paper goes on to question the very distinction between 'supply' and 'demand' in the provision of legal services

What’s a box of “Bakewell Tarts” got to do with it? Performing gender as a judicial virtue in the theatre of justice

On a July morning in 2013 a box of a popular English branded confection called“Cherry Bakewells’ appeared in the court of the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. It generated much laughter. The event was the swearing in ceremony for Dame Julia Wendy Macur as a judge of the Court of Appeal. If her appointment was a cause for celebration, the backdrop to the event was the serious business of judicial renewal and the gender composition of the judiciary. Neither topic is a laughing matter. Drawing upon data generated through the observation of 18 swearing in events this chapter uses the gender/humour interface to examine the gender dynamics of the social world of the judiciary as an institution. Keywords: ceremonial archive, gender, judicial diversity, wi

Litigation: historical and contemporary dimensions

Sharyn Roach Anleu and Wilfrid Pres

Social work and the law

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Judicial work and AV use: Perceptions from Australian courts

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Magistrates, magistrates courts, and social change

New Yor