Ethics

I highly recommend spending some time with the new issue of the Fordham Law Review, which is devoted to the papers from the symposium, "The Economic Downturn and the Legal Profession."  Mitt Regan and Palmer Heenan (a Georgetown 2L) contributed a particularly strong paper, Supply Chains and Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation of Legal Services.  One quote stands out, in my view, as capturing the crux of the problem faced by firms and by new attorneys.  Rio Tinto's managing attorney explained the company's standard for sending legal work to a legal process outsourcing company in India:

"If you had a junior associate sitting next to you, would you hand the assignment to that junior associate?  If the answer is 'yes,' it can probably go to India." 

But don't stop at the provocative quote -- read the whole thing.