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7 Legal Ethics 1 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/lethics7 and id is 1 raw text is: Legal Ethics, Volume 7, No. 1 Editorial KIM ECONOMIDES AND JULIAN WEBB Now We Are Six: The Quest for Ethical Certainty in an Uncertain Legal World As Legal Ethics enters its seventh year, Brad Wendel, in his inaugural editorial as Book Reviews Editor, offers us a timely reminder of our mission. This, he suggests, is to pose three challenges to legal ethics' scholarship: to define the domain of legal ethics; to study the sub- ject from a perspective that has validity across jurisdictions, and to incorporate the insights of related fields into the domain. Over the years we have been pleased to publish papers that have brought local, comparative and global perspectives to respond to these challenges, and this tradition is well maintained by the current issue which, with contributions from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, the USA and the UK, also counts as one of our most inter- national to date. In this issue our contributors confront some of the diverse contexts of contemporary legal practice and the crisis of confidence in public ideals and professional duty that threaten the service ideal at all levels of legal work, from the judiciary down to voluntary legal advisors. The link between these contributions is a concern with the perennial question, what is the role of the individual lawyer, and of the legal profession, in a changing world? As lawyers we are faced with an environment ruled, as Wendel also observes, by a polycentric and complex regulatory system, an environment where traditional professional bearings are either totally absent or rapidly being replaced by new values that may even purport to legitimate corrupt practices. In these ethical deserts it is often difficult to distinguish mirage from reality and even harder to find true sustenance or a sense of direction. One response of lawyers-and increasing numbers of law schools-concerned to find professional balance is to support charity or, as it is known in legal circles, pro bono, as a counterweight to the emphasis on more profitable, often commercial work and clients. Supporting the arts or the community through sponsorship is yet another way in which larger firms put something back into the public arena while also demonstrating civic virtue. 1 See, eg, in the UK context the work of the Solicitors' Pro Bono Group. Through its LawWorks initiative, the Group is encouraging and supporting students to gct involved in pro bono work prc-qualification, as part of an attempt to build a strongerpro bono culture in the profession see www.students.probonogroup.org.uk/about.htm. Notc also Kicran Trantcr's discussion ofthc tradition of scrvicc icarning within Catholic law schools in thc USA and Australia, later in this issue.

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