Ethics of Prosecution

This article considers the codes of conduct of professionals carrying out prosecution work, and obedience to these codes. Such codes are referred to as the “legal ethics” of the respective professions. Three codes of conduct apply: The Code for Crown Prosecutors, the Solicitors Code of Conduct and the Code of Conduct for the Bar.Paper delivered by Professor Avrom Sherr, Director, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies as Woolf Chair in Legal Education at a Public Lecture, at the IALS in 1998

Market for Legal Services

Preprint of a piece by Avrom Sherr (Woolf Professor of Legal Education, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London) for the new Palgrave dictionary of economics and the law, September 1997

Other side of the mountain

Report of an assessment visit by a team organised under the auspices of the Danish Centre for Human Rights to the Overberg Justice Project 9th to 15th December 2001. This report on the Overberg Justice Centre (“OJC”) is based on the findings of a team visit taking place between 9th and 15th December 2001. The methodology of the review, the composition of the team and the objectives of the assessment are set out below. A review of the academic literature then places this assessment in the context of developments internationally and the South African scene

Competence and skill acquisition in lawyer client interviewing

This study considers the competence of lawyers. in carrying out the work of interviewing their clients and the value of training and experience in acquiring client interviewing skills. Literature on legal skills is first surveyed to assist in understanding the concept and help decide on methodology. Literature on client, interviewing' and the educational value of experiencee reviewed to provide background to subsequent studies. The first study provides an overall framework for solicitors' work and monitors, through observation and questionnaire, the work of a number of solicitors over a four day period. Client interviewing is found to take up a larger proportion of solicitors' professional work than other categories noted, and observation proves to be a more sound basis for studying detail than a questionnaire approach. The second study assesses the competence of 27 new trainee solicitors at interviewing clients through a detailed monitoring of their performance over thirteen tasks using eighteen different techniques and providing thirteen heads of information. Their performance exhibited many of the deficiencies recognised in the literature. The trainees were then randomly allocated to three treatment groups. One group received full training, one received training without audio-visual feedback of first interviews and the third (control) received no training at all. They all then undertook a second interview which was similarly assessed. Training was found significantly to enhance performance over the spectrum of measurement, an audio-visual feedback) especially enhanced behavioral aspects of performance. In the final study, solicitors and trainees ranging widely in experience were videotaped interviewing their clients and similarly assessed. Experience was not found to have- the expected effect of enhancing performance significantly except in some minor respects, but it did increase the feeling of confidence in interviewing ability. In conclusion, suggestions are made for stronger linking of training with experience in the production of new lawyers

A stitch in time: Accessing and funding welfare rights through health service primary care

Evaluation of primary care based specialist welfare rights advice provision in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham

Legal Education, Legal Competence and Little Bo Peep

Inagural lecture by Professor Avrom Sherr as Woolf Chair in Legal Education at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studie

Tabula Rasa and other Fairytales

Paper by Avrom Sherr, Woolf Professor of Legal Education, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London delivered as a plenary speech to the Learning in Law Initiative (LILI) conference at Warwick University, 2001

Professional Work, Professional Careers and Legal Education: Educating the Lawyer for 2010

This paper considers how legal education and training should react to change in the legal professions. It refers briefly to existing literature on the character of these changes and develops information on new forms of legal work. It then goes on to consider a set of developing legal concepts and legal subject areas in order to begin a critical discussion of whether, and how, legal education should reorganise in view of the changes in the profession. How should one begin the process of constructing legal education for a globalised, internationally regulated, industrialised, “deprofessionalised” legal profession with resultant effects on legal careers, legal concepts and legal subject classifications? Looking at the paradigms of legal work, concepts of “graduateness”, types of legal career and new legal concepts, this paper begins the work of mirroring changes within society against changes in legal practice and consequential developments for legal education. Preprint of an article by Avrom Sherr, Woolf Professor of Legal Education and Director, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, University of London

Developing outcome measures for the assessment of quality and competence of firms involved in legal aid work

This paper reviews research work carried out and reported in papers presented to the (then) Legal Aid Board between 1996 and 1997. This work considered the efficacy of developing outcomes measures assessment for firms involved in legal aid work by looking at each principle subject area in detail and in overview at both advice and assistance and litigation work. Recommendations of individual subject areas are brought together and a set of options for implementation are developed. Outcomes measures are compared with input, structure and process measures as set out in “Lawyers:- The Quality Agenda” (1994). “In relation to measuring competence it is clear again that there are no easy answers. Competence is such a multifaceted concept that any successful attempt to measure will need to combine a multiplicity of outcome, process and structural measures. The performance indicators which are used in the medical world… appear to have their parallels in certain output measures in the legal world. However, the transferability of such measures may be more apparent than real… Success rates on their own can be quite misleading.” Outcome measures are considered against regional differences such as the “North-South divide”, in relation to size of law firm entity and in relation to the different types of claim and case. There are more outcomes than winning or losing, gaining financial or other advantage or prevention of some act. Client satisfaction and fulfilling expectations are also important and broader, societal outcome implications need also to be considered