Book Review: Lawyers and Their Work in New South Wales — Preliminary Report
| DOI | 10.1177/000486587901200214 |
| Author | Maureen Kingshott |
| Date | 01 June 1979 |
| Published date | 01 June 1979 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
BOOK
REVIEWS
63
and
capacity
to
ignore
the
poor
or
inappropriate
advice,
and
select
that
which
is
sound
and
appropriate.
Frankly, this
book
has little
redeeming
value.
The
two
possible uses to
which
it
may
be
put
are
limited
by
the
brevity
of
the
commentaries,
the
poor
quality
of
the
photographic
illustrations,
and
the
previously
mentioned
shortcoming
concerning
technological
advances,
eg,
breathalysers
and
digital
communications.
This
book
is,
one
suspects, an
artifact
of
the
pressure on
American
academics
to publish;
the
numbers
game.
Since
its publication, the
author
has
obtained
a
position as chief
of
an
American
police
department.
It
would
be
interesting to
know
if his
training
officer utilizes
the
text.
In conclusion, this is
not
a
book
to
be
placed
on
departmental
library
lists.
Should
patrol
supervisors
or
training
officers
happen
to
come
across a
copy,
however,
they
may
care
to
peruse
it as a
check
against their
own
material.
BRUCE
Sw
ANTON
Canberra
Lawyers
and
Their
Work
in
New
South
Wales -
Preliminary
Report.
R
Tomasic
and
CBullard
(Law
Foundation
of NSW) 349
pp
$5.95.
Don't
be
fooled
by
the size
of
this
book
- as its title indicates, it is a
preliminary
report
of
the
results of a
survey
completed
by
the
New
South Wales
Law
Foundation
for
the
benefit
of
the
New
South Wales
Law
Reform
Commission,
Law
Society
and
Bar Association. As
such
it is filled
with
explanatory
tables,
graphs
and
appendices
which
comprise
two-thirds
of its
content.
The
authors
included
this
reference
data
to assist
those
bodies
interested
in evaluating
the
various policies
being
considered
during
the
present
inquiry
into
the
legal
profession
in
New
South
Wales,
and
most
of
it will
not
be
republished
in
the
final
report.
By analysing
the
results
of
a
questionnaire
completed
by
543 individual
lawyers, the
book
deals
with
the sociological aspects of
the
legal
profession
- its
social
and
educational
background,
the
organization
and
specialization
of
work
within it, the
type
of
people
encountered
as clients,
and
lawyers'
views of
the
litigation process, fees
charged
and
barrister
Isolicitor relationships.
An instance
of
the
numerous
predictable
results that
were
obtained
is
the
confirmation
of
the
elitist,
conservative
educational
and
socio-economic
family
background
which
spawned
most
of
the
respondents
to
the
survey. As
the
authors
point
out, this suggests
that
the
ordinary
life experiences
of
the
majority
of
New
South
Welshmen
may
be
quite
foreign to
most
lawyers.
The
legal
profession's
relevance
to
the
community
as a
whole
is seriously
questioned
by
such findings, especially
when
it is
revealed
in a later
chapter
that
the
majority of
clients
seem
to possess asimilar social
and
educational
background
to the
majority of lawyers.
The
Law
Reform
Commission
could
well
ask
who
provides
legal services to
poor,
uneducated,
migrant,
female citizens
of
New
South
Wales?
One
of the
many
interesting features
of
the
survey results is
the
consistently
differing
standards
found
between
city solicitors
working
in
Sydney
and
their
confreres in
the
suburbs
and
country
areas. This is highlighted in their formal
training
and
entry
to the profession,
their
recognition of,
and
willingness to
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