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11 Legal Ethics 1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/lethics11 and id is 1 raw text is: Legal Ethics, Volume 11, No. 1 Valedictory Editorial KIM ECONOMIDES AND JULIAN WEBB Should Lawyers Swear? Legal Ethics started over a decade ago, having first appeared in the summer of 1998. As founding Editors we have steered the journal through its initial phase and sought to provide a solid platform from which academic and practising lawyers can report, debate and reflect on current developments that shape the content and boundaries of professional responsibil- ity. We have been particularly keen to include material that stimulates awareness of ethical issues amongst law students, legal scholars and lawyers in the UK but, at the same time, have encouraged contributions-sometimes working with guest editors on special issues-that draw widely upon international experience as well as developments taking place in other pro- fessions and disciplines. In the process the journal has made, in our view, some particularly strong contributions to the discussion of professional education and regulation. Our aims have been simple but challenging: to identify and disseminate rigorous scholarship that has the capacity to deepen our understanding of the ethical in law and legal practice, and to inform or improve education and professional conduct so that ultimately the public may have better access to good lawyers, both now and in the future. We believe that achieving this aim is vital not only in the interests of consumers of legal services, but also for the moral and eco- nomic health of the legal profession itself, and indeed society at large. Given the continuing need for independent lawyers and judges to resolve social conflict fairly in ever more hostile, competitive and vulnerable financial environments, it is perhaps surprising that this gap was not identified in the UK context, and filled, much earlier than it was. Credit must go to the prescient Ross Cranston who made an especially valuable contri- bution by bringing ethics to the attention of the Society of Legal Scholars (then the SPTL) when, in 1993, he took professional responsibility and legal ethics as the theme of his presi- dential address.' While we take some pride in the role of the journal in following through this breakthrough, we must also acknowledge that progress here has not been nearly as rapid or substantial as we might have expected or hoped for. 1 R. Cranston (ed), Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (Oxford University Press, 1995) ch. 1 (reviewed by Richard O'Dair in the first issue: (1998) 1 LegalEthics 93). See also R. Cranston, How Law Works. The Machinery and Impact of CivilJustice (Oxford University Press, 2006) ch. 6. For a recent overview of developments in the UK over the past two decades see D. Nicolson, 'Education, Education, Education': Legal, Moral and Clinical (2008) 42 Law Teacher 145.

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