Assessing Lawyers' Ethics

Legal practitioners operate in an environment of seemingly endless ethical challenges, and against a backdrop of diminishing public opinion about their morality.

Based on extensive research, Assessing Lawyers' Ethics argues that lawyers' individual ethics can be assessed and measured in realistic frameworks. When this assessment takes place, legal practitioners are more likely to demonstrate better ethical behaviour as a result of their increased awareness of their own choices.

This book advocates a variety of peer-administered testing mechanisms that have the potential to reverse damaging behaviours within the legal profession. It provides prototype techniques, questions and assessments that can be modified to suit different legal cultures. These will help the profession regain the initiative in ethical business practice, halt the decline in firms' reputations and reduce the risk of state-sponsored regulatory intervention.

• Makes specific suggestions to improve lawyers' ethical behaviour
• Conclusions are based on empirically-based findings
• It takes a provocative approach to improving legal ethics, and proposes the adoption of 'ethics testing' for legal practitioners