![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article explains the main theoretical aspects of legal ethics, identifies the nature and intellectual structures of legal ethics research, and examines the occurrences, relationships, interconnections, developments and emerging trends of the topic of legal ethics in global legal research, using one of the methods of scientometrics – bibliometric analysis. The annual growth of legal research outputs indexed by Scopus was about 7% over the entire period of study (1991–2020). The most popular type of research outputs in the field of legal ethics are research articles. A multidisciplinary scope of scholarly sources on legal ethics reveals the scholarly development of each field/scientific branch that is both unique and integrated with law and legal ethics, unfolds multifaceted perspectives of legal ethics research, and a contextual sociolegal approach to legal ethics as a social, societal, and political expression. Legal ethics is a much broader and more complex phenomenon than simply a set of codes/rules of ethics and requires integrated research: from an understanding of the particular impact and significance of legal education, ethical rules, and personal morality to ethical decision-making processes, cognitive and social factors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Charles Fried, ‘The Lawyer as Friend: The Moral Foundations of the Lawyer-Client Relation’ (1976) 80 The Yale Law Journal 1060.
2 For example, Frederick A Elliston, ‘Ethics, Professionalism, and the Practice of Law’ (1985) 16(3) Loyola University of Chicago Law Journal 529–47; Geoffrey C Hazard, ‘The Future of Legal Ethics’ (1991) 100(5) The Yale Law Journal 1239–80; Kenneth Kipnis, ‘Ethics and the Professional Responsibility of Lawyers’ (1991) 10(8) Journal of Business Ethics 569–76; Russel G Pearce, ‘The Professionalism Paradigm Shift: Why Discarding Professional Ideology Will Improve the Conduct and Reputation of the Bar’ (1995) 70 New York University Law Review 1229–76; Donald Nicolson, ‘Making Lawyers Moral? Ethical Codes and Moral Character’ (2005) 25(4) Legal Studies 601–26; Rakesh K Anand, ‘Legal Ethics, Jurisprudence, and the Cultural Study of the Lawyer’ (2008) 81(3) Temple Law Review 737–86; Tomas Berkmanas and Edita Gruodytė, ‘Teisininkų etikos vertybių realumo ir modeliavimo problemos // Issues of the Reality of the Values and the Modeling of Legal Ethics’ (2014) 85 Problemos 79.
3 Geoffrey C Hazard, ‘The Future of Legal Ethics’ (1991) 100(5) The Yale Law Journal 1239–80.
4 Kim Economides, ‘The Road to Justice Revisited: Current Trends in Professional Legal Ethics’ (2006) 27:1 Recht der Werkelijkheid 3, 17.
5 Francesca Bartlett, Reid Mortensen and Kieran Tranter, Alternative Perspectives on Lawyers and Legal Ethics. Reimagining the Profession (Routledge 2010).
6 Jerzy Zajadlo, ‘Ethics and Legal Ethics’ in Sebastian Sykuna and Wydawnictwo C H Beck (eds), Legal Ethics in Poland: Foundations. Professions. Principles. Responsibility (Wydawnictwo C. H. Beck 2020).
7 Ibid.
8 Donald James Nicolson, ‘Teaching Legal Ethics: What, How and Why’ (2010) Revista de Educación y Derecho. Education and Law Review Número 1. Octubre 2009- Marzo 2010.
9 Dodek M Adam, ‘Canadian Legal Ethics: Ready for the Twenty-First Century at Last’ (2008) 46(1) Osgoode Hall Law Journal 1–49.
10 Kathleen Clark, ‘The Legacy of Watergate for Legal Ethics Instruction’ (2000) 51 Hastings Law Journal 673.
11 David B Wilkins, ‘Who Should Regulate Lawyers?’ (1992) 105 Harvard Law Review 799; David B Wilkins, ‘Legal Realism for Lawyers’ (1990) 104 Harvard Law Review 468.
12 Alejandro M Gozon, ‘Legal and Judicial Ethics, its Relevance Revisited’ (2009) 10(1) Arellano Law and Policy Review 1–14.
13 William H Simon, The Practice of Justice: A Theory of Lawyers’ Ethics (Harvard University Press 1998) 138.
14 Jeffrey A Maine, ‘The Importance of Ethics and Morality in Today's Legal World’ (2000) 29 Stetson Law Review 1073–90.
15 William H Simon, ‘The Trouble with Legal Ethics’ (1991) 41 Journal of Legal Education 65.
16 Gozon (n 10) 1–14.
17 Rakesh K Anand, ‘Legal Ethics, Jurisprudence, and the Cultural Study of the Lawyer’ (2008) 81(3) Temple Law Review 737–86.
18 David Luban, ‘Freedom and Constraint in Legal Ethics: Some Mid-course Corrections to Lawyers and Justice’ (1990) 49 Maryland Law Review 424–35.
19 Deborah L Rhode and David Luban, Legal Ethics (Foundation Press 2004) 3.
20 CA Kent, ‘Legal Ethics’ (1908) 6(6) Michigan Law Review 468–79.
21 Maine (n 12) 2000.
22 W Bradley Wendel, ‘The Limits of Positivist Legal Ethics: A Brief History, A Critique, and a Return to Foundation’ (2017) Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence 445.
23 Anand (n 15) 737–86.
24 Ibid 737–86.
25 Zajadlo (n 6).
26 For example, Leslie C Levin, ‘Bad Apples, Bad Lawyers or Bad Decisionmaking: Lessons from Psychology and from Lawyers in the Dock’ (2009) 22 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 1549–94; Tigran W Eldred, ‘Prescriptions for Ethical Blindness: Improving Advocacy for Indigent Defendants in Criminal Cases’ (2012) 65 Rutgers Law Review 333; Jean R Sternlight and Jennifer K Robbennolt, ‘Behavioral Legal Ethics’ (2013) Paper 883 Scholarly Works; Nancy B Rapoport, ‘“Nudging” Better Lawyer Behavior: Using Default Rules and Incentives to Change Behavior in Law Firms’ (2014) 4 St. Mary’s Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics 42–110.
27 Jennifer K Robbennolt, ‘Behavioral Ethics Meets Legal Ethics’ (2015) 11 Annual Review of Law and Social Science 75–93.
28 Rasa Aleksandrovė, ‘Vilniaus universiteto tyrėjų publikacijų, paskelbtų 2018 m. ir registruotų duomenų bazėje Web of Science Core Collection, Bibliometrinė analizė // Bibliometric analysis of the publications by researchers of Vilnius University published in 2018 and registered in the database Web of Science Core Collection’ (2019), Vilnius University Library: 2019.
29 The amount of scientific output in both databases changes on a daily basis as new 2020 publications are constantly added, therefore, the data as of 25 March 2021 are used for this analysis.
30 Web of Science database Core Collection. Search <http://apps.webofknowledge.com/Search.do?product> accessed 25 March 2021.
31 Scopus database. Search <https://www.scopus.com/results/results.uri?sort> accessed 25 March 2021.
32 Raminta Pranckutė, ‘Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus: The Titans of Bibliographic Information in Today’s Academic World’ (2021) Publications 9 (12).
33 Vanessa Sandoval-Romero and Vincent Laviviere, ‘The National System of Researchers in Mexico: Implications of Publication Incentives for Researchers in Social Sciences’ (2020) Scientometrics 122: 99–126.
34 Vosviewer <https://www.vosviewer.com/> accessed 25 March 2021.
35 Nees Jan Eck and Ludo Waltman, ‘Software Survey: Vosviewer, a Computer Program for Bibliometric Mapping’ (2010) Scientometrics 523–38.
36 RIS is a format developed by Research Information Systems (RIS) to enable the bibliometric processing of research data and digital data exchange. Researcher ID: A Global Community Where Researchers Connect <http://www.researcherid.com/resources/> accessed 25 March 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20170707033254/http://www.researcherid.com/resources/html/help_upload.htm
37 The above-referred terms were not selected randomly; they were generated by VOSviewer software as the terms linked with the object of legal ethics research. VOSviewer also included other terms, but they were manually excluded by the author from the research field as they were not directly connected to the research area or where generic, e.g., child, man, woman, etc.
38 Nees Jan Eck and Ludo Waltman, VOSviewer Manual (Universiteit Leiden 2020).
39 Eck and Waltman (n 33) 523–38.
40 As mentioned in the Introduction, there was a slight variation in the number of publications on Scopus last year (2020), therefore, the data provided are relevant as of 25 March 2021.
41 Laurel S Terry, ‘The Impact of Global Developments on U.S. Legal Ethics during the Past Thirty Years’ (2017) 30(365) The Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 386.
42 Antonio Argandona, ‘Three Ethical Dimensions of the Financial Crisis’ (2012) 944 IESE Business School Working Paper 3.
43 Edward J Schoen, ‘The 2007–2009 Financial Crisis: An Erosion of Ethics: A Case Study’ (2017) 146 Journal of Business Ethics 805–30.
44 Eli Wald, ‘The Economic Downturn and the Legal Profession, Foreword: The Great Recession and the Legal Profession’ (2010) 78(5) Fordham Law Review.
45 The multiplier 3 means that the Vosviewer field of analysis includes only the keywords (items) with occurrence (or co-occurrence) of at least 3. Although Vosviewer offers / sets the multiplier at 5 by default, considering a rather small quantity of the research data, the default multiplier narrows the sample of keywords (terms) considerably and, for this particular reason, the author decreases / selects the multiplier 3 manually.
46 Considering the fact that the quantity of research data has increased almost 3 times (compared to the preceding periods), the default multiplier 5 as offered / set by Vosviewer is used.
47 This selection criterion (not less than 8 publications over the decade researched) has been chosen because it indicates an exceptional productivity of the relevant part (around 10%) of researchers (according to the quantity of Scopus publications). As a matter of fact, a very large share of scholars has 7 and fewer publications, therefore, the attribute of less than 8 publications was not regarded as outstanding productivity in the context of this research and was not analysed.
48 Default multiplier offered / set by Vosviewer – 5.
49 Christine Parker, David Luban, Deborah L Rhode and Bradley Wendel, The Philosophical Foundations of Legal Ethics: A Roundtable In Reaffirming Legal Ethics. Taking Stock and New Ideas (Routledge 2010) 12.
50 Vladlen Kotlun and David Hafner, ‘The H-index No Longer an Effective Correlate of Scientific Reputation’ (2021) 16(6) PLoS ONE.
51 Ibid.
52 Mohit Sharma, Anurag Sarin, Priyanka Gupta, Shobhit Sachdeva and Ankur V Desai, ‘Journal Impact Factor: Its Use, Significance and Limitation’ (2014) 13(2) World Journal of Nuclear Medicine 146.
53 Eduardo Garcia-Pachon and Ricardo Arencibia-Jorge, ‘Comparison of the Impact Factor and the SCImago Journal Rank Index in Respiratory System Journals’ (2014) Archivos de Bronconeumologia 308–309.
54 Scopus database. Sources <https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri> accessed 29 March 2021.
55 Robin Creyke, Laying Down the Law (University of Melbourne 2021), Chatswood, NSW: LexisNexis, 2021.
56 Pranckutė (n 30).