Word: barred
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Adds Harvard Professor Vernon Countryman: "The bar is still dominated by shortsightedness and self-interest. Spotting change there is like watching a glacier move...
Much of the criticism centers on the bar's bible for self-regulation, the Code of Professional Responsibility. In defining a lawyer's duty to his client and the law, the code manages to be vague, rigid, complex and contradictory-all at the same time. "So long as its practitioners are guided by these principles," the code proclaims, "the law will continue to be a noble profession." But Illinois Law Professor Thomas D. Morgan, writing in the Harvard Law Review, found that virtually every section of the code serves lawyers first, protecting them from public criticism and increasing...
When pushed, the bar is capable of substantial reform. Eighteen lawyers were disbarred or disciplined in the Watergate scandal, and D.C. Bar Disciplinary Counsel Fred Grabowsky now says: "Watergate may have been the best thing that ever happened to us." Prodded by Supreme Court decisions, the bar has belatedly begun backing group prepaid legal-service plans, Blue Shield-style arrangements that bring legal aid to middle-income citizens for a flat fee (the United Auto Workers, for instance, has installed such a system for its Chrysler workers). With some exceptions, bar groups have also pushed for expansion of Government legal...
...current wave of criticism comes at a time when the bar should, in theory, be more amenable to progress and new ideas than ever before. Nearly half the 218,000 A.B.A. members are now under 36 years old, and recent meetings have approved such once scandalous proposals as the decriminalization of marijuana possession. Says John Douglas, past president of the District of Columbia Bar: "There's more reform now, but it still isn't coming fast enough...
...capable of self-regulation," says Green. "It's the same argument put out by meat manufacturers in 1906 and auto manufacturers in 1965." To increase the pressure, a Nader group, Public Citizen Inc., last week shipped copies of a pamphlet entitled 10 Ways to Take On Your Local Bar Association to 50 consumer groups across the nation. The broadside urges formation of local watchdog units to monitor bar regulations, publication of legal directories with fee information, pressure on law firms for more pro bono publico work, and demands for lay voices in the disciplining of lawyers...