The American legal profession in crisis: resistance and responses to change

Central to the identity of the American legal profession are its systems of self-regulation. Throughout history, the legal profession has tried to hold tight to its traditional values and structure during times of self-identified crisis. This book analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. The book argues that with striking consistency, the profession has resisted the societal change happening around it, and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change

Central to the identity of the American legal profession are its systems of self-regulation. Throughout history, the legal profession has tried to hold tight to its traditional values and structure during times of self-identified crisis. The American Legal Profession in Crisis: Resistance and Responses to Change analyzes the efforts of the legal profession to protect and maintain the status quo even as the world around it changed. Author James E. Moliterno, consistently argues that the profession has resisted societal change and sought to ban or discourage new models of legal representation created by such change. He demonstrates how the profession has held to its anachronistic ways at key crisis points in US history: Watergate, communist infiltration, immigration waves, the litigation explosion, the civility crisis, and the current economic crisis. Ultimately, he urges the profession to look outward and forward to find in society and culture the causes and connections with these periodic crises, and in doing so, to grow with the society it claims to serve. This paperback version includes a commentary on the prevailing crisis in legal education.