Effects of Reputation on the Legal Profession

Table of ContentsI. Introduction 174II. The Significance of Lawyers' Reputations 176III. Who Knows What About Which Lawyers? 183A. Earned Reputations 183B. Manufactured Reputations 186C. Kinds of Reputations 189D. The Accuracy of Reputations 191E. Signaling and Its Effects 192IV. Learning About Reputation 195A. What We Should Know for Writing and Enforcing the Professional Rules 195B. What We Should Know in Order to Assist Clients in Obtaining Valid Reputation Information 204C. Obtaining Reputation Evidence 207D. Publicizing Reputation Information 209V. Conclusion 1I. IntroductionBefore entering academia and teaching Professional Responsibility, I practiced law as a criminal defense attorney representing indigent individuals and as a public interest litigator suing officials of government and other organizational entities. A faculty colleague who also teaches Professional Responsibility represented exclusively corporate clients through large, established law firms. Although we are good friends, we rarely see eye to eye on what legal ethics should require and how effective the legal ethics codes can be.Lying at the core of many of our disagreements is the role that the reputation of lawyers and signaling between lawyers and clients have in determining the impact of the professional rules. In part, the divergence in our views has to do with our backgrounds. When writing about legal ethics, I typically am focusing on the relationship between individual unsophisticated clients who know little about lawyers, defer to them significantly, and depend on lawyer self-regulation and professional discipline to ensure appropriate representation.1 My colleague envisions sophisticated corporate clients, who know what they want and actively shop for counsel, and corporate lawyers willing to provide the desired service in order to obtain large legal fees.2The clients I am thinking of, at best, select their lawyers based on vague word of mouth from a limited number of peers who tell them the lawyers have done a good job in the past. When the potential clients visit a lawyer for the first time, they are unlikely to leave the lawyer's office unrepresented, because the consumers do not have, or do not feel that they have, alternatives and do not fully comprehend the differences among lawyers and in how lawyers act. Once these clients retain counsel, they do not expect to exert significant control over her.3My colleague's clients and lawyers live in a different world. His clients obtain references, study past results the lawyers have obtained, interview prospective counsel, and let them know what they want to achieve (and how).4 The lawyers, in return, let the clients know how much they want the representation by adjusting their fees (or not) and signaling to the clients how they will behave if certain eventualities arise. These clients will know the lawyers' reputations for aggressiveness, cutting corners, and willingness to oppose client demands.The caricatures of clients and lawyers that my colleague and I conjure up, while stemming from our experiences, are not necessarily representative of the way all, or most, clients and lawyers act. …