This is the third edition of the leading textbook on legal ethics and the regulation of the legal profession in England and Wales. As such it maps the complex regulatory environment in which the legal profession in England and Wales now operates. It opens with a critical overview of professional ideals, organisation, power and culture and an examination of the mechanisms of professions, exercised through governance, regulation, discipline and education. The core of the book explores the conflict between duties owed to clients (loyalty and confidentiality) and wider duties (to the profession, third parties and society). The final part applies lawyers' ethics to dispute resolution and settlement (litigation, negotiation, advocacy and alternative dispute settlement). Now laid out in a more accessible format and written in a more approachable style, the book is ideal reading for those teaching and learning in the field of legal ethics.

The fourth edition of this respected textbook examines the regulation and conduct of lawyers in England and Wales and addresses new developments in the field, including those in international practice, sexual misconduct, and the environment. Focusing on the practice of, and interrelationship between, solicitors and barristers, the book provides background to current arrangements while exploring contemporary rules of conduct, systems of regulation, and controversies. The four main parts cover client duties, wider obligations, key contexts, and regulation. Parts one to three provide an academic introduction to the subject of lawyers' ethics. They are suitable as a core text for a semester course at undergraduate level, providing grounding for vocational training, such as the Solicitors' Qualifying Examination. Comparisons are made with conduct rules applying in other leading common law jurisdictions where relevant. These parts also explore links between the subject of ethics and the development of lawyers' practical skills. Part four applies the general principles to three elements of regulation: practice, admission, and discipline. The approach throughout is socio-legal. While the essential law is described, relevant social science research informs consideration of issues and debates.

"This book aims to produce lawyers who can debate, criticise and change professional ethics as well as understand their underlying rationale. Written by the author of the leading work on the subject, The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales, this book is aimed at the undergraduate student taking a half or full course in the subject. The book is divided into four parts dealing with the professional and regulatory framework for delivering legal services, the obligations owed to clients, wider duties and responsibilities and practice settings. It sets out the important background to the modern practice of law, and explains the theoretical underpinning of professional ethics and its everyday application through conduct rules and principles. Extracts from legislation, cases and conduct rules are provided, and comparative issues are considered where relevant. The book is also interactive, raising issues and posing questions that will encourage students to engage with the material as they read, which will also be helpful for classroom discussion." -- Publisher's website.

This book aims to produce lawyers who can debate, criticise and change professional ethics as well as understand their underlying rationale. Written by the author of the leading work on the subject, The Ethics and Conduct of Lawyers in England and Wales, this book is aimed at the undergraduate or postgraduate student taking a half or full course in the subject. The book is divided into four parts dealing with the professional and regulatory framework for delivering legal services, the obligations owed to clients, wider duties and responsibilities and practice settings. It sets out the important background to the modern practice of law, and explains the theoretical underpinning of professional ethics and its everyday application through conduct rules and principles. Extracts from legislation, cases and conduct rules are provided, and comparative issues are considered where relevant. The book is also interactive, raising issues and posing questions that will encourage students to engage with the material as they read, which will also be helpful for classroom discussion.

Ethics and regulation have become catchwords of the late 1990s, yet relatively little has been written about the ethical discourse and regulation of the legal professions in England and Wales. This book represents the first attempt to subject the ethical discourse of the English legal professions to in-depth analysis and sustained critique. Drawing on insights from moral philosophy, social theory, the sociology of the legal profession, public law theories of regulation, and the extensive American literature on lawyers' ethics, it argues that, in seeking to provide definitive answers to particular problems of professional conduct, professional legal ethics has failed to deliver an approach which requires lawyers actively to engage with the ethical issues raised by legal practice. Through an analysis of the core issues facing lawyers, the authors locate this failure in the profession's reliance on a liberal and adversarial role morality that conceptualises the ethical values of human dignity, autonomy and equality in a formalistic and narrowly legalistic manner. This encourages lawyers to overlook the real invasions of these values so often wrought by upholding clients legal rights, and to ignore the competing claims of affected third parties, the wider community and the environment In seeking to move beyond critique, the authors develop throughout the book a contextual approach to individual ethical decision-making and outline a range of institutional, regulatory and educational reforms which, they suggest, could form the basis for a more ethical brand of professionalism. Professional Legal Ethics: Critical Interrogations is a wide-ranging and thought-provoking analysis written for lawyers, ethicists and policy-makers interested in this neglected area of professional ethics and regulation.