The American Legal Profession
This course will deal with selected aspects of the history, organization, economics, ethics, and possible futures of the legal profession in the United States. Likely topics will include, in addition to the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct: demographic changes in the profession, the evolution of law firms, bar associations, and law schools from the early twentieth century to the present; the development of corporate law, personal injury, mass torts, prosecutorial and criminal defense practices, and the "public-interest" bar; the dominant professional ethic of adversary-advocacy, and its critics; the regulation of lawyers; the economics of the market for legal services; the organization and culture of law firm practice; the role of the role of the lawyer as counselor; and the export of American lawyering models abroad.