Efficiency considerations have played an increasing role in the development of legal doctrine over the last decades. Our paper investigates the consequences of the efficiency doctrine for the long run allocation of human resources between the legal profession and other professional activities. It is argued that a short run pursuit of the efficient scope of legislation may create an inefficient ...

This study examined whether lawyers' attributions of responsibility for mental illnesses affect their decisions about involuntary treatment. A survey that was mailed in 2003 to Illinois lawyers involved in involuntary commitment elicited recommendations for involuntary treatment for characters presented in vignettes. The survey also sought respondents' attributions of personal responsibility fo...

irresponsible for his crime. Upon this the lawyers and the doctors have once more joined issue, though there appear to be signs that, with the exception of the rigid, high and dry variety, the lawyers are somewhat more disposed than formerly to recognise that psychology may, after all, be a real aid to the administration of justice. The fact that the MedicoLegal Society is steadily growing in n...

Philosophy and justice have always had a rocky relationship. Socrates, remember, was put to death for teaching young people to question received wisdom on matters of public importance. 2 Yet his pupil Plato dared to maintain that philosophers possessed ways of thinking that could help answer our most puzzling questions about the nature of both truth and justice. This is our paradox: Sometimes o...

Lawyers who represent their clients in mediation may often find themselves at odds with their mediators. The mediators may be trying to create new value for the parties, beyond a simple compromise of their legalistic claims and defenses. They may be seeking to repair or improve the parties’ relationship, or they may wish to lead the parties to greater mutual understanding. Lawyers, on the other...

This paper examines how the advice that lawyers provide to their clients affects the disclosure of evidence and the outcome of adjudication, and how the adjudicator should allocate the burden of proof in light of these effects. Despite lawyers’ expertise in assessing the evidence, their advice is found to have no effect on adjudication, if the lawyers follow disclosure strategies that are undom...

Abstract Metapragmatic comments are crucial in lawyers’ attempts at managing legal advice communication with asylum seekers. Drawing on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, this paper aims to demonstrate how/when/why textual features which tell interactants how interpret ongoing speech used context lawyer-client field immigration law. The data analysis reveals l...