The Lost Lawyer : Failing Ideals of the Legal Profession
America's lawyers are viewed with ambivalence. The best, perhaps embodied by Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird , combine judgment and principle with something of the scholar's love of the pursuit of truth. Yet Dan Quayle questions lawyers' basic honesty and trustworthiness at the annual American Bar Association convention. Kronman (law, Yale Univ.) worries about the decline of the "lawyer-statesman," that lawyer who possesses more than just technical proficiency in legal persuasion. Kronman sees Abraham Lincoln and, more recently, the late Chief Justice Earl Warren as just such "lawyer-statesmen." Both possessed those traits of prudence, wisdom, and judgment that counted far more than legal expertise. Their absence underlies the crisis facing the American legal profession. This is an interesting book, but it won't change many of the well-entrenched opinions about lawyers. For academic and larger public library legal collections.- Jerry E. Stephens, U.S. Court of Appeals Lib., Oklahoma CityCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.