![handle is hein.journals/lethics15 and id is 1 raw text is: ii
Farewell Editorial
Christine Parker
This will be my last general issue of Legal Ethics as General Editor. In July 2012 Professor
Reid Mortensen (University of Southern Queensland) will take over as General Editor of
Legal Ethics, with Professor Hilary Sommerlad (University of Leicester) continuing as Arti-
cles Editor. Professor Alice Woolley (University of Calgary) will also continue as Book Re-
view editor and Dr Linda Haller (University of Melbourne) as Ethics in Practice Editor.
I am very grateful to Hart Publishing and the legal ethics community for the opportu-
nity to be General Editor of Legal Ethics over the last four years. It has been a real pleasure
and excitement to edit a journal designed to support and display research, writing and com-
mentary in legal ethics. As highlighted in our forum piece, 'Roundtable on Legal Ethics in
Legal Education: Should it be a Required Course?' in Volume 14(1) (Summer 2011), legal
ethics still has an ambivalent status in law schools around the world. In some jurisdictions
such as Australia, New Zealand and the US, it is now a compulsory part of the law degree.
In others, such as the UK, the possibility of making it a standard part of the law degree is
under consideration, but is still treated by many with considerable skepticism. In other ju-
risdictions, even the possibility of legal ethics becoming a mainstream part of the law degree
is a long way in the future. The US has a vibrant community of legal ethics scholars with a
number of outlets for publishing their work. Elsewhere in the world, the scholarly commu-
nity is still developing and Legal Ethics is at the forefront of providing an outlet for scholar-
ship and writing on legal ethics, defined broadly to include writing on the legal profession
and its regulation, as well as ethics, and in supporting the development of an international
legal ethics community through the International Legal Ethics Conferences.'
I am particularly proud of the way that Legal Ethics is developing to provide an outlet for
exciting scholarship from all over the world. Our level of submissions has more than dou-
bled in the last four years and we have been able to become more selective about the papers
we publish. The spread of authors from different jurisdictions around the world has also
improved. Before 2008, about half of our articles were coming from the UK, with a quarter
from Australia and New Zealand and 14 per cent from the USA. In the last two years we have
developed a different spread, with almost half of our articles from Australia and New Zealand
(representing the flowering of legal ethics scholarship in these jurisdictions), 20 per cent
from the UK, 16 per cent from the US and 10 per cent from Canada. In every issue we pub-
Francesca Bartlett and Reid Mortensen, 'Integrity in Legal Practice: A Report from the Third International Legal
Ethics Conference, Gold Coast, Australia' (2009) 12(1) Legal Ethics 100; Vivien Holmes and Kath Hall, 'The
Legal Profession in Times of lirbulence' [Report on International Legal Ethics Conference IV] (2010) 13(2)
Legal Ethics 209.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/lethics15&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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