Public Interest Lawyering is the first comprehensive analysis of public interest lawyering that is suitable as a law school elective text and/or advanced legal profession courses and seminars. Drawing upon a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives, this timely textbook examines the lives of public interest lawyers, the clients and causes they serve, the contexts within which they work, the strategies they deploy, and the challenges they face today. Features: The first comprehensive overview of the broad range of contemporary issues faced by public interest lawyers in any American law school text. Thorough discussion of important theoretical issues about the scope and definition of public interest lawyering. Addresses American public interest law from a historical perspective with focus on current issues. Expansive examination of the settings in which public interest practice occurs, including nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and private law firms. Presents the advantages and limits of different legal strategies in public interest practice, including lobbying, public education, community organizing, and community economic development. Addresses contemporary challenges of public interest law in context, including economics and financing, legal ethics, the role of legal education, and the globalization of public interest practice. Discusses critiques of public interest law, including a reflection about the role of lawyers in social movements that addresses contemporary critiques. Ethical obligations of public interest lawyers. Explores special issues related to lawyer-client relations in social change contexts. Extensive coverage of: Models of law reform organizations. Conservative cause lawyering. Government lawyers. The economics of social change lawyering. Global social change lawyering.

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct provides an up-to-date resource for information on legal ethics. Federal, state and local courts in all jurisdictions look to the Rules for guidance in solving lawyer malpractice cases, disciplinary actions, disqualification issues, sanctions questions and much more. In this volume, black-letter Rules of Professional Conduct are followed by numbered Comments that explain each Rule's purpose and provide suggestions for its practical application. The Rules will help you identify proper conduct in a variety of given situations, review those instances where discretionary action is possible, and define the nature of the relationship between you and your clients, colleagues and the courts.

This collection of original essays by leading and emerging scholars in the field examines the history, conditions, organization, and strategies of pro bono lawyering. Private Lawyers and the Public Interest: The Evolving Role of Pro Bono in the Legal Profession traces the rise and impact of the American Bar Association's campaign to hold lawyers accountable for a commitment to public service and to encourage public service within law schools. Combining empirical legal research with reflections by practitioners and theorists about the meaning and practice of pro bono legal work, this collection of essays interrogates the public service ideals that are inscribed within the legal profession and places these ideals within a broader social, economic, ideological, and normative context. Particular attention is paid to the factors that explain why lawyers engage in pro bono work and the ways in which their views of pro bono are mediated by the institutional context of their legal practice. The book also explores the concept of "public" in public service and compares pro bono as a means of delivering legal services with other mechanisms such as state funding. Collectively, these essays investigate the evolving role of pro bono in the legal profession and in law schools, the relationship between pro bono ideals and pro bono in practice, the way that pro bono is shaped by external forces beyond the individual practitioner, and the multi-faceted nature of legal professionalism as expressed through pro bono practice.

Monographic compilation of essays on public interest, law activities in the USA - presents theoretical analysis of failure of government policy to enhance public interest law, firm behaviour and volume of business, presents case studies in interest group advocacy for environmental protection, housing, employment, sex discrimination, consumer protection, occupational safety and occupational health, etc., and includes jurisprudence. Graphs, references and statistical tables.

This book analyses in a comprehensive manner the phenomenon of 'public interest' in different areas of law, both public and private. The contributions focus on the definition of public interest and the distinction between public and private interest. Further, they define the relevant 'public' and investigate the weight of public interest in case of conflict with other considerations and the legal consequences of its breach.

Every day, in courtrooms around the United States, thousands of criminal defendants are represented by public defenders--lawyers provided by the government for those who cannot afford private counsel. Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender has a surprisingly contentious history--one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state," but also about the contours and compromises of twentieth-century liberalism. First gaining appeal amidst the Progressive Era fervor for court reform, the public defender idea was swiftly quashed by elite corporate lawyers who believed the legal profession should remain independent from the state. Public defenders took hold in some localities but not yet as a nationwide standard. By the 1960s, views had shifted. Gideon v. Wainwright enshrined the right to counsel into law and the legal profession mobilized to expand the ranks of public defenders nationwide. Yet within a few years, lawyers had already diagnosed a "crisis" of underfunded, overworked defenders providing inadequate representation--a crisis that persists today. This book shows how these conditions, often attributed to recent fiscal emergencies, have deep roots, and it chronicles the intertwined histories of constitutional doctrine, big philanthropy, professional in-fighting, and Cold War culture that made public defenders ubiquitous but embattled figures in American courtrooms.