Doing Good Instead of Doing Well? What Lawyers Could be Doing in a World of “Too Many” Lawyers

Authors

  • Carrie Joan Menkel-Meadow University of California Irvine

Keywords:

Legal profession, social problem solving, legal knowledge, legal education, comparative professions, Abogacía, resolución de problemas sociales, conocimiento jurídico, educación legal, comparación de profesiones

Abstract

This paper explores some of the misalignment in the legal profession in terms of allocation to particular parts of the profession. The paper suggests that there are not “too many lawyers,” but that lawyers could and should be doing other things, beyond conventional forms of legal representation, both for access to justice, and for transformations of the legal system and human problem solving. Lawyers can perform different roles in dispute resolution (mediating, arbitrating, negotiating, as well as litigating), including performing design functions for organizations and other sites of iterated disputes, advising individuals and entities about how to handle and “manage” conflict in order to actually reduce the need for conventional legal services. The paper explores issues of what constitutes “legal knowledge and expertise” and how such knowledge might be deployed to solve complex social and legal problems outside of conventional legal professional boundaries. Contrasts are made with other areas of expertise and the restructuring of professional knowledge in other fields such as business consulting and architecture. The paper concludes by suggesting that lawyers and legal educators need to proactively reframe what is considered to be legal work and legal education for new ways of legal and human problem solving to be studied and learned.

Este artículo analiza algunos desajustes en la distribución de determinadas partes de la abogacía. Se sugiere que no hay "demasiados abogados", sino que los abogados podrían y deberían estar haciendo otras cosas, más allá de los sistemas convencionales de representación legal, tanto en el acceso a la justicia, como en las transformaciones del sistema jurídico y la resolución de conflictos humanos. Los abogados pueden asumir diferentes papeles en la resolución de conflictos (mediación, arbitraje, negociación, o defensa jurídica), incluyendo el diseño de funciones para organizaciones y otras instituciones dedicadas a las disputas, aconsejando a individuos y entidades sobre cómo manejar y “gestionar” los conflictos, con el fin de reducir de forma real la necesidad de los servicios jurídicos convencionales. El artículo explora los asuntos relacionados con "el conocimiento y la experiencia jurídica" y cómo se puede utilizar este conocimiento para resolver problemas sociales y legales complejos que quedan fuera de los límites profesionales jurídicos convencionales. Se comparan con otras áreas de conocimiento y con la reestructuración de los conocimientos profesionales en otros campos, como las empresas consultoras y de arquitectura. El artículo concluye sugiriendo que abogados y profesores de derecho deben replantear de forma proactiva lo que se considera trabajo legal y educación jurídica, para estudiar y aprender nuevas formas de resolver conflictos humanos y legales.

DOWNLOAD THIS PAPER FROM SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2269818

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Author Biography

Carrie Joan Menkel-Meadow, University of California Irvine

Chancellor's Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine Law School and A.B. Chettle Professor of Law, Dispute Resolution and Civil Procedure, Georgetown University Law Center. J. D. University of Pennsylvania, cum laude, 1974; A.B. magna cum laude with Honors in Sociology, Barnard College, Columbia University, 1971; LL.D (Hon) Quinnipiac University, 1995 and Doctor Of Law (Hon.), 2010, Southwestern Law School. University of California. Irvine Law School, 401 East Peltason Drive, Law 4800-J. Irvine, CA 92697-8000 (USA) cmeadow@law.uci.edu

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Published

03-09-2012

How to Cite

Menkel-Meadow, C. J. (2012) “Doing Good Instead of Doing Well? What Lawyers Could be Doing in a World of ‘Too Many’ Lawyers”, Oñati Socio-Legal Series, 3(3), pp. 378–408. Available at: https://opo.iisj.net/index.php/osls/article/view/202 (Accessed: 29 March 2024).