Georgetown Law
Georgetown Law Library

Legal Ethics and Legal Profession Research Guide

This guide focuses on the codes of professional ethics and ethics opinions from the American Bar Association and state bar associations. This guide also identifies resources for researching management of law offices and corporate legal departments.

Current Awareness

To keep abreast of the hottest issues related to the legal profession, these web sites and blogs monitor the profession and are updated on a regular basis.

  • Adam Smith, Esq. -  This site focuses on the economics of law firms. It covers partnership structures and practice group management in depth. Extensive links to other worthwhile legal resources are provided.
  • Altman Weil - Altman, Weil, is one of the largest management consulting firms to law firms and legal departments and their web site provides management tips. The articles, news and resources tab links to material on trends in the legal profession, job descriptions for legal professionals and pertinent surveys and special reports.
  • General Counsel Metrics - Law Department Management - Rees Morrison, a leading consultant to corporate law departments shares his expertise in this blog updated daily.
  • Law Firm Management Center (FindLaw)  - This basic starting point covers topics such as management, firm automation, marketing and practice support.
  • Legal Executive Institute (Thomson Reuters) - Formerly Hildebrandt, this consulting firm to law firms and corporate law departments, follow the trends in the legal profession and write about "what the future may hold". The blog focuses on all aspects of management, technology and strategy. They produce a quarterly report analyzing the demand for legal services, as well as reporting on the trends of negotiated rates and productivity.
  • Legal Profession Blog - Law professors monitor emerging issues in the legal profession and post their comments and findings on this blog. The topical archive allows readers to focus on specific areas of interest including billable hours, clients and more.
  • Statista - This market research service includes detailed graphs of information about the legal services industry (among other industries).  Available information includes overviews of the legal market in various countries, statistics on law firm employment, diversity in the legal profession, surveys of legal clients, and current trends in the legal profession.