The New Lawyer: How Settlement Is Transforming the Practice of Law (Law and Society)

An adversarial “client warrior” image dominates historical notions of the lawyer, and a commitment to “zealous advocacy” remains one of the core norms of the legal model. Yet structural changes within both the justice system and the legal profession have rendered the “warrior” notion outdated and inadequate, with a shift toward conflict resolution rather than protracted litigation.

The new lawyer’s skills go beyond court battles to encompass negotiation, mediation, and restorative justice initiatives. Julie Macfarlane sets out the parameters of practitioners' evolving roles, articulating legal and ethical complexities in a variety of contexts drawn from Canadian and American legal literature as well as from her own empirical research. The result is an extremely thoughtful exploration of the increasing impact of alternative consensus-seeking strategies on the lawyer-client relationship, as well as on the legal system itself.