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Title: In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession by Deborah L. Rhode ISBN: 0195121880 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: January, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50

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Average Customer Rating: 3.83

Rating: 3
Summary: Interesting Mix of Fact and Opinion
Comment: Rhode's assessment of the U.S. legal system's problems is presented clearly and comprehensively, and, to some extent, persuasively. I found the writing at times dry, typical of what one might expect in an academic paper. However, if you're interested in the law, you are likely to gain some insight from Rhode into the legal system's woes as seen by those within and outside the profession. Although the book appears to be thorough, well researched, and documented, Rhode sometimes mixes her own biases and opinions with the facts, without making a clear distinction. For instance, with respect to hiring, mentoring, and promotion of lawyers in law firms, Rhodes states that disfavoring women and minorities stigmatizes and subordinates the entire group, while disfavoring white males does not. On this issue, her point is that preferential treatment is needed to remedy discrimination encountered by certain groups, which requires disfavoring members of other groups (presumably straight white males). In this example, her statements related to affirmative action are largely passed off as fact. Presumably, the reader is expected to accept these comments at face value, without substantiation or discussion of alternative views or approaches that address problems of employment discrimination. From her mixing of fact and opinion on this topic, readers may wonder what is really accurate in this book, and what is not.

Rating: 2
Summary: another pointing out and failure of tangible remedy
Comment: I have a shelf of 20 books describing the shortcomings of legal practice today. I do not find anything new in Rhode Members of the legal profession are worried, and the public holds much of the profession in low regard. Yet, we must have the law and at its best it truly holds our society together, and establishes standards of free discussion of evidence.

The Rhode book is full of suggestions preceded by "should", "need to", "desirable that", "train lawyers" and "reduce need for". The last is not quite so. There is much need for conflict resolution which does not go to court owing to the hassles with lawyers and judges.

Those who should follow up and implement these "shoulds" and provide the remedy, namely the judges and the legislators, are themselevse lawyers. The problem is stubbornly analogous to Aids, where the disease fighting system becomes itself diseased.

There must be external oversight. We need strong citizens commission formed with a majority of non-lawyers.

I have written a short book to this effect but it does not yet have a publisher. I welcome support on publication. .....

Rating: 5
Summary: What to call 1000 lawyers reading this book: a good start
Comment: As it happens, two of the very best books on law I have read so far this year have been written by people whose political outlooks differ significantly from my own. This is one of them. (The other is W. David Slawson's _Binding Promises_, which I've reviewed as well.)

In this volume, Deborah L. Rhode sets out to tell us what is wrong with the legal profession and how to fix it.

That's a big job, and it is to her credit that she succeeds as well as she does. Rhode's exposition is a delight: she possesses an absolutely first-rate critical intelligence (including a highly sensitive B.S. detector); she writes clearly and gracefully; and she has an insider's view of the legal profession. As a result she has a firm grasp of the competing incentives facing both lawyers and legislators, as well as a keen insight into the self-serving rhetoric of the bar associations.

I will not bother picking nits about minor points. Rhode offers, and discusses at length, two absolutely critical insights which should be not only read but shouted from the rooftops by anyone concerned with the present state of the legal profession. These are as follows:

(1) The legal profession uses the power of the law to act in an anti-competitive fashion and prevent the intrusion of lower-cost alternatives into its market -- all the while proclaiming itself to be above sordid and crass "commercialism," as though the practice of having paralegals thrown in jail is _really_ intended for the "public good" and only _happens_ to protect overpriced attorneys from competition.

(2) Legal education, as currently practiced, is neither necessary nor sufficient as preparation for either law practice or legal scholarship. Moreover, the few times anybody has bothered to check, there has been basically no correlation whatsoever between law school performance and professional performance.

The second of these is actually a consequence of the first, and I would have liked to see more discussion of this point than Rhode provides. The ineffectiveness and irrelevance of legal "education" is a direct, economically intelligible consequence of the legal profession's casting itself as a sort of intellectual priesthood and maintaining its "guild" status by law; here I think Rhode could profit from a closer look at her own inconsistent case for the value of competition.

But I won't argue the point here. This is a terrific book all around, and every lawyer and law student should probably read it if possible.

Also recommended: Mary Ann Glendon's _A Nation Under Lawyers_, especially for its delightful debunking of the legal profession's attacks on "commercialism." In this respect and others, Rhode's book is a worthy successor to Glendon's and belongs on the shelf next to it.

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