Book Review: The Ethics of Representing Organizations: Legal Fictions for Clients

Title: The Ethics of Representing Organizations: Legal Fictions For Clients
Authors: Lawrence J. Fox Susan R. Martyn
Publisher: Oxford University Press (New York)

Date of Publication: 2009
Pages: 440
Price: $125.00
The authors (Lawrence J. Fox, a partner at Drinker Biddle & Reath, specializes in corporate and securities litigation; Susan J. Martyn, Stoepler Professor of Law and Values at the University of Toledo College of Law, teaches Legal Ethics, Bioethics & Law, and Health Care Provider Liability) both possess expertise and publication history in the field of legal ethics. In this volume the authors attempt to provide a handbook for the representative of organizations to better assist the practitioner in better representing the client and steering clear of ethical problems.

By inserting New Yorker Magazine cartoons relating to attorneys, the authors implicitly recognize the common place public perception of attorneys being ethically-challenged or less than ethically scrupulous in their roles as zealous advocates. In this manner, they inject some humor into a relatively arid subject. On a more serious note, the authors provide a valuable resource to practitioners representing various types of organizations. Factual scenarios are presented in a question and answer format that is conversational in nature and written in non-academic prose. The text is comprehensively footnoted with case law, Restatement, and Model Rule references. Appendices include selected state rules of professional conduct and selected sections of the restatement of laws.

This book is recommended for practitioners, law libraries, and academic libraries.

Theodore Pollack, Sr. Law Librarian, NY County Public Access Law Library

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