Welcome to the first issue of 2024.
Howlin asks what motivated barristers in Ireland in the mid- to late-twentieth century. By looking backwards at the careers of barristers at or near retirement, this article gives information on the motivations of those who joined the profession and had considerable influence and authority in the Irish state.
Welsh and Newman develop an occupational culture typology of publicly funded criminal defence lawyers. They identify some pervasive “yet fluid” characteristics – camaraderie, expertise, economisation, standardisation, conflict, social justice and adversarialism and pessimism.
Masterton, Flood, Rathus and Tranter look at the attitudes and roles of legal professionals who handle cases for women whose children have been abducted internationally from custodial mothers. The view from the mother clients was of lawyers with “moral assessments” of the women’s behaviour which had the tendency to continue the sense of the violence of abduction, “as agent of the perpetrator and the state”.
Timoshanko, Hart, Bartlett, Murray and Perry-Petersen looked at the effects of disruption on small and medium-sized firms in Queensland and how they coped with the problems of Covid. They consider how technology was used in relation to the disruption and what might be required for preparedness for future similar disruption.
Powell and Siller look at the conflict between a university’s duties to provide suitable mental health management for its law students and the need to prepare them for the vicissitudes of legal practice. They suggest that learning outcome frameworks may assist to manage this conflict in responsibilities.