Judges (allegedly) in debt to bookies are in hot water ethically. . . . . . Law schools continue to discuss curricular reform. . . . . . Here's an article with some demographics for the gender and racial make-up of the Canadian legal profession. . . . . . David Boies says that to make justice more accessible, we need to reduce the cost of trials. Agreed. (Maybe it's a pipe dream, but if we had a lot of one-week trials and two-week trials, more people could sit on more juries and we'd all be better citizens. Imagine how much better a voter you'd be if you had served as a juror on two criminal trials and two civil trials.) . . . . . Legal Profession Blog reports on a report on improved CLE and lawyer education. (My two cents: too many state bars view CLE as a means for employing staff and making their own money off of CLE. California's approach is market-oriented and works well.) I will finish with a quote from a law review article that's discussed over at the Greg Jones Blog. The passage was written by Patrick Schiltz, then a professor and now a judge, and it captures an Aristotelian approach to legal ethics:
He [mentor James Fitzmaurice] taught me by being a decent man who practiced law every day in a decent manner . . . . Moral formation “rests on small matters, not great ones,” and what I recall most about Fitzmaurice are “the small matters”:
I recall how Fitzmaurice would take strident letters or briefs that I had drafted and tone them down. I recall how Fitzmaurice would run into an attorney who had treated him shabbily and greet the attorney warmly. I recall how Fitzmaurice would time and again refer clients and files to young lawyers in our firm who were having trouble attracting business. I recall how Fitzmaurice never blamed others for his mistakes, but often gave others credit for his accomplishments. I recall how often Fitzmaurice took the blame for mistakes that I and other young attorneys made. I recall how Fitzmaurice, at the conclusion of a trial or hearing, would walk over to the client of his adversary and say, “I just want you to know that your attorney did a terrific job for you.” In short, what I best recall about Fitzmaurice were not occasions of great moral heroism, but his “quiet, everyday exhibitions of virtues.” It was through such exhibitions that he helped shape my character and instill in me the habit of acting ethically.
(Patrick J. Schiltz, Legal Ethics in Decline: The Elite Law Firm, the Elite Law School, and the Moral Formation of the Novice Attorney, 82 MINN. L. REV. 705, 738 (1998))