The Lost Lawyer : Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession

Rating:
Summary: A Misfire Worth Reading
Review: Charlotte Rampling, beautiful and tear-stained, has a minor breakdown midway through The Verdict--she's fallen for Paul Newman, the lawyer she's been assigned to seduce and spy on by her boss at the big, evil law firm. James Mason, the suave evil boss, consoles her with a drink and an apothegm: "You don't get paid to do your best," Mason says. "You get paid to win." That scene (expertly written by David Mamet) explains the legal profession in America and provides a summary of Kronman's argument. Kronman, the current Dean of Yale Law, bemoans the extinction of lawyers of sound judgment, prudence, and a concern for a range of interests--the client's, the law's, society's, etc. Lawyers who were actively involved with their community and their country, who were looked to as figures of wisdom, not avarice. But Kronman is more diagnostic than prescriptive. He's right--that breed of lawyer has all but vanished. Still, he provides little in the way of practical suggestions for correcting the problem. And his focus is on the profession and the law schools. His focus should be on the free market. Elite American law schools are catering to the needs of the large firms, which are catering to the needs of their corporate clients. To graduate marketable lawyers, the schools have to create skilled technicians. The hiring partner at a Wall Street Firm wants to know that an applicant has the stamina necessary to put in the hours, and the intelligence and tools needed to grind out competent work. No one is interested in his or her views about what might be a more prudent approach to the client's problem; his or her judgment is not only not demanded, it's unwelcome. Kronman's focus is too narrow. The legal profession has become the law business. Because that's what's demanded by clients, who pay the tab. So I think he should have examined the underpinnings of the free market system, which I favor but which is responsible for the shift in legal education and law practice. Also, how does one teach prudence? How does a vocational school--or perhaps any school--instil sound judgment? Furthermore, prudence and judgment are qualities that, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder. Finally, Kronman's assertion that much of the problem arose when the large Protestant law firms started hiring Jews, African-Americans, women, and associates from the working classes and from second and third-tier schools sounds not only wrong, but bizarrely priggish and elitist in all the wrong ways. Kronman, as far as I can tell, has never practiced law for any length of time, nor has he toiled as a judge. He's spent his career locked in the Ivory Tower of academia, and his book is the high-toned result.

Rating:
Summary: Should be required reading
Review: Everyone who is an attorney, or wants to be one, will benefit from reading this book. Kronman's 'Lost Lawyer' is the 'Lawyer-Statesman,' an attorney with practical wisdom who practices law as a profession, not as a business. Kronman thinks various pressures have pushed the Lawyer-Statesman from the practice of law, leaving only lawyers who see the law as a means to make money. The book can be arcane, but not too arcane for someone who has been through law school. It should be required reading for all law students.

Rating:
Summary: A Misfire Worth Reading
Review: This is a very interesting book by Yale's Law School Dean, Anthony Kronman about law schools, legal teaching, the practice of law, Courts and the governing principles of law firms nowadays in the United States.
The central idea is that the modern American legal profession is in a crisis, a crisis of morale. Disguised by the material rewards of the profession, the downturn has been brought about by the demise of the traditional set of values that until recently played a definitive role in the aspirations of American lawyers. According to the author, previous generations of lawyers conceived their highest aim to be an attainment of practical wisdom about human beings and their affairs- that anyone who wishes to provide effective and real deliberative counsel must possess. This wisdom was perceived as a result acquired only by becoming a person of good judgment, and not merely an expert in technical matters of the law. The cultivation of this character virtue, was an important professional ideal, and contributed fundamentally to the perception that lawyers had about the intrinsic value of their work. And it is this ideal which is now dying in the legal profession. Lawyers find it increasingly difficult to attribute intrinsic fulfillment to their profession. Mainly, as the attention shifts to other means (material, metalegal, etc.) for fulfillment, lawyers cultivate less the traditional values and are ill prepared to provide sound legal and political advise. So, Kronman embarks in a journey to restate the original ideals of what he calls the lawyer-stateman. Therefore, in the first part of the book, he seeks to define and defend more demanding standards of professional excellence. In doing so, he dwells with some complex philosophical issues involved, in simple terms. In the second part we get a more practical and sociological analysis of legal institutions and their cultural dynamics: the current shape of the Courts, legal schools, legal firms, and other institutions involved.
Why should this book be read by all lawyers and students? Because it provides a clear diagnostic of most of the shortcomings of the profession and clues to possible solutions.
Anybody involved in the legal profession as a lawyer, cannot avoid the sensation of looking at a mirror when reading: "The fascination with moneymaking that pervades large-firms practice today tends, in a subtle but significant way, to unsettle the delicate balance between sympathy and detachment in which practical wisdom consists"..."a culturally reinforced preoccupation with money makes it more difficult to sustain the kind of self-forgetfulness required to deliberate for and with another person on his or her behalf"..."this demands that he temporarily suspend his own interests, for only by doing so can he clear an effective space in which his client's interests may be entertained with real feeling".
And in fact, as Kronman states, many modern clients are primarily concerned with making money, and this goal can distort the lawyer's advice by not telling the client that the option that yields the most money, is not the best one overall. The lawyer who is a believer of the money making process and shares his client concern for money, can find it difficult to avoid mistakes in its own deliberations......

Rating:
Summary: RESCUING THE FADING IDEALS OF ADVOCACY
Review: This is a very interesting book by Yale's Law School Dean, Anthony Kronman about law schools, legal teaching, the practice of law, Courts and the governing principles of law firms nowadays in the United States.
The central idea is that the modern American legal profession is in a crisis, a crisis of morale. Disguised by the material rewards of the profession, the downturn has been brought about by the demise of the traditional set of values that until recently played a definitive role in the aspirations of American lawyers. According to the author, previous generations of lawyers conceived their highest aim to be an attainment of practical wisdom about human beings and their affairs- that anyone who wishes to provide effective and real deliberative counsel must possess. This wisdom was perceived as a result acquired only by becoming a person of good judgment, and not merely an expert in technical matters of the law. The cultivation of this character virtue, was an important professional ideal, and contributed fundamentally to the perception that lawyers had about the intrinsic value of their work. And it is this ideal which is now dying in the legal profession. Lawyers find it increasingly difficult to attribute intrinsic fulfillment to their profession. Mainly, as the attention shifts to other means (material, metalegal, etc.) for fulfillment, lawyers cultivate less the traditional values and are ill prepared to provide sound legal and political advise. So, Kronman embarks in a journey to restate the original ideals of what he calls the lawyer-stateman. Therefore, in the first part of the book, he seeks to define and defend more demanding standards of professional excellence. In doing so, he dwells with some complex philosophical issues involved, in simple terms. In the second part we get a more practical and sociological analysis of legal institutions and their cultural dynamics: the current shape of the Courts, legal schools, legal firms, and other institutions involved.
Why should this book be read by all lawyers and students? Because it provides a clear diagnostic of most of the shortcomings of the profession and clues to possible solutions.
Anybody involved in the legal profession as a lawyer, cannot avoid the sensation of looking at a mirror when reading: "The fascination with moneymaking that pervades large-firms practice today tends, in a subtle but significant way, to unsettle the delicate balance between sympathy and detachment in which practical wisdom consists"..."a culturally reinforced preoccupation with money makes it more difficult to sustain the kind of self-forgetfulness required to deliberate for and with another person on his or her behalf"..."this demands that he temporarily suspend his own interests, for only by doing so can he clear an effective space in which his client's interests may be entertained with real feeling".
And in fact, as Kronman states, many modern clients are primarily concerned with making money, and this goal can distort the lawyer's advice by not telling the client that the option that yields the most money, is not the best one overall. The lawyer who is a believer of the money making process and shares his client concern for money, can find it difficult to avoid mistakes in its own deliberations......