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4 Int'l J. Legal Prof. 5 (1997)

handle is hein.journals/injlepro4 and id is 1 raw text is: INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 4, NOS. 1/2, 1997

EDITORIAL
Dinners, library seats, wigs and relatives
AVROM SHERR1
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (University of London), London, UK
This Special Issue for 1997 features a set of reports on the state of legal ethical rules
in five countries across Europe. It represents the first fruits of an exercise funded by
the Europe University Institute in Florence which brought together on two occa-
sions legal ethicists from six countries. The initial intentions of the project were: to
provide an opportunity for scholarly exchange in this field; to build up an initial
picture of the major recent and current issues relating to legal ethics within each
jurisdiction; to draw from this the beginnings of a comparative understanding of
legal ethics across Europe; and to gain a higher level analysis of legal ethics and of
ethical issues than would be available from within the context of a single jurisdiction.
The background for such objectives was the overall European Union desire to
provide a harmonisation of law and legal professionals across Europe.
The group considered legal ethics to be of interest in themselves, in terms of
self-regulation, in the picture that changes in ethics provides, in the different
approaches between civil and common law countries, in terms of control of entry
into the profession and in the symbols they provide of professional life.
(1) Legal ethics are intrinsically important because they provide a particular
view of both law and lawyers. Since legal ethics regulate and constrain the
activities of legal professionals it is important to note how such constraint
is organised and accepted in different jurisdictions by those who themselves
apply the law to others. Not only is the nature of such regulation of interest,
but also the lack or abundance of them. Similarly relevant is whether such
rules are in general obeyed and what procedures, systems and tribunals are
available for policing and judging the conduct of lawyers affected by such
rules.
(2) The level of self-regulation was also studied. By tradition, professionals
regulate themelves. Some would say this remains a defining characteristic of
professionalism. But increasingly there is a lay involvement in professional
discipline, and in some parts of the world, an increasing societal or

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