The New Lawyer

Thought-provoking and wise, The New Lawyer explores how new legal trends like mediation and consensus-seeking strategies can impact the lawyer-client relationship.

This provocative, intelligent work looks at the evolving role of lawyers, articulating legal and ethical complexities, the growth of conflict resolution, and the increasing impact of alternative strategies on the lawyer-client relationship and the legal system.

Julie Macfarlane is a professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor.

John Pender:
It is a researched and learned discussion and is an extremely valuable […] book for anyone wanting to understand the broad changes in advanced western democracies which have been and are still happening. It highlights some issues and tensions which will impact how best to carry out your role as a New Lawyer. […] On the whole the book is thought provoking […]. I do not know of any other attempt to deal with the whole issue so well. Ms. Macfarlane is to be congratulated.

Andrew Pirie, University of Victoria:
Professor Julie Macfarlane is onto something here. As she does in the Preface to The New Lawyer, I too would recommend this book not only to those lawyers who may be disillusioned with what she calls the “warrior mentality ” of legal practice but also to lawyers who may be sceptical of the alternative legal image […] Macfarlane ’s compromise convergence produces a happy hybrid that many lawyers can relate to and already see within themselves — a lawyer who is both a fighter and a settler and who helps the client both engage with conflict and make a “game plan for victory.”

Ronald F. MacIsaac:
The Justice system is ever changing and Ms. MacFarlane has enunciated some constructive alternatives to the public concept of lawyers as courtroom battlers. The author outlines the new lawyer who has shifted strategy to also consider mediation and restorative justice. The book is useful to trial lawyers in that it outlines how to benefit by learning how to best use these options.

Deborah Macfarlane:
The New Lawyer is the first book to thoroughly research and describe the massive changes in the legal profession and practice in the last three decades, and to make a serious attempt to predict what will happen in the decades to follow … an outstanding effort. Readers will not be disappointed.

Nancy A. Welsh, Professor of Law, Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania State University:
A provocative and hopeful vision of the ‘new lawyer’ who has chosen to embrace a more inclusive calling … With Macfarlane’s guidance, it may be possible to reclaim the pragmatic nobility of the legal profession.

David Hoffman, Chair, Collaborative Law Committee of the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolution:
The legal profession needs a wake-up call, and The New Lawyer resoundingly provides it. Macfarlane persuasively critiques the outmoded habits of the profession and lays a strong foundation for the new settlement-oriented, problem-solving approach to lawyering.