WILLIAM D. HENDERSON, Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington
Email: wihender@indiana.edu

Over the last several decades, virtually every large law firm has adopted some variant of the Cravath system, which builds human capital by hiring the best students from the best schools and providing them with the best training. At the end of a multi-year tournament, the best associates are promoted to partner. In theory, this system delivers superior services to clients, thus creating firm-specific capital that generates higher profits. In recent years, however, the surge in demand for corporate legal services has outstripped the supply of one key input - elite law school graduates. The ensuing salary wars have significantly increased the cost structure of large corporate law firms and undercut clients' willingness to pay for associate training. These trends are unsustainable. More significantly, clients are unhappy and searching for ways to control costs.

This essay draws upon the findings of an innovative study of engineers at the renowned Bell Laboratories to sketch out a plausible alternative law firm model that could profit from client discontent. In an exhaustive study that was designed to identify the various traits of star performers (so Bell Labs could recruit more of them), researchers found no relationship between performance and various social, psychological, and cognitive abilities, such as I.Q. Two years of observational fieldwork subsequently revealed that higher productivity among knowledge workers was attributable to several distinctive work strategies that were teachable. Further, controlled experiments showed large and persistent productivity gains for engineers who completed the training program, with women and minority workers posting the largest increases. I discuss whether these insights could be applied to law firms (the answer is yes) and why law firms nonetheless would resist despite the potential for higher profits. I then outline how the concept could be put to a market test.

MATILDA ARVIDSSON, Doctoral Candidate
Email: Matilda.Arvidsson@jur.lu.se

The article is an auto-ethnographical account of the practice law in the mundane everyday life at Lund District Court, Sweden. The focus is on the spatial and organizational every day conditions of practicing law in the office space. It researches the practice of law, in the office part of the court, as a human practice in a constant call between de-contamination from personal identity and a re-call of that lost subjectivity as the judge is turning words into law by signing the document by hand, with his own name, and in his own personal hand writing.

CAROLYN GROSE, William Mitchell College of Law
Email: cgrose@wcl.american.edu

Lawyers struggle fiercely with loyalties. We are guided by obligations to our clients, to the legal system, to some concept of justice, to some notion of truth, and by our own moral and ethical compass. And on top of all this, we have to follow the profession's ethical rules. Much has been written about how these loyalties exist - or coexist - in uneasy competition, if not downright conflict; and there is no consensus among scholars or practitioners on how a lawyer can, let alone should, act in trying to balance these competing obligations.

Adding complexity to - or maybe in fact simplifying - this debate are the nuanced, complex, multi-faceted experiences our clients share with us. This article introduces some of these stories into the analysis a lawyer undertakes to determine his ethical obligations. Drawing from the experiences of two sets of clients and their lawyers, the piece proposes an approach to ethical regulation that requires the lawyer to engage in a deeply contextual analysis of the specific and particular ethical conflicts presented to him in any particular case; and work with his client to determine how to resolve those conflicts.

The first part of the article introduces the stories of these clients as the lawyers came to know them and as the ethical dilemmas unfolded. This section sets the stage for further analysis both of the Rules of Professional Conduct and of the process lawyers undertake to understand and apply those rules. The second part of the paper shifts the focus to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct themselves and tells the stories again, this time in the context of those rules. This second telling reveals that the rules that make up the system of ethical regulation are interpreted to apply to generic, abstract clients in generic, abstract situations.

Drawing on critical lawyering and narrative theory, the third part of the paper proposes an alternative approach to interpreting and resolving ethical conflicts. The article suggests that the system of regulation should be interpreted to allow room for the attorney to consider and incorporate the client's narrative context. Such an approach places the client in the center of the inquiry and requires the lawyer and client to engage actively in dialogue and problem-solving. It allows the lawyer and client together to arrive at solutions that both respond to the particular client's needs, and attend to the moral and ethical concerns the lawyer and society might have. By using a critically reflective, intentional process of inquiry around ethical (and other) concerns, the lawyer must focus on this particular client in the context of his life and his legal/non-legal needs in this particular situation. Such an inquiry results in ethical decisions that meet the lawyers' competing obligations of loyalty to the client, to himself, and to the legal system.

GREG BAKER, College of William and Mary - Marshall-Wythe School of Law
Email: dgbake@wm.edu

This article will discuss the fascinating and growing area of neuroscience and the law. The innovations in science, medicine, and technology create unique opportunities for the law. Creative problem-solving in the law can take cues from many of these innovations. Brain imaging for example is discussed as one of the newest creations that might play a pivotal role in the criminal justice system. While I endorse the use of science and technology as an integral part of a multidisciplinary approach to legal problem solving, I also urge we take such steps with caution. In considering the appropriate legal roles for many of these relatively new creations to take, we must be reminded that fundamental legal principles, the Constitution, and our Bill of Rights are at stake.