Why do I find it so hard to fit in with NEV, or rather, with the leadership of NEV ?
All the usual things I say. I think the leadership and management are not generally supportive of Openness, Transparency, Inclusiveness, and tend towards Autocracy in way to many important decisions for the village.But I searched Google for the phrases - Civility and "Middle Class"
Came across this essay, which certainly has lots of echoes about my issues with the way NEV operates. And some interesting "conclusions" or analyses. I give a bit of an extract of the start and end of the essay.
ValparaisoUniversity Law Review, Vol. 28, No. 2 [1994], Art. 7
Not far from the beginning
Given the narrowness of the profession's investigation of
the complaint, it is hardly surprising that civility codes are proffered as
partial cures for what ails us. After all, these codes attempt to micro-manage
the conduct of lawyers by introducing fixed categories of professional and
unprofessional behavior, and specifying, in advance and across the board,
desirable and undesirable acts. The drafters of civility codes justify them,
even when they are not mandatory, as benign (but presumably compelling)
expressions of shared values-the statement of the legal community's ethos. Advocates
predict that civility codes will, at a minimum, have a salutary placebo effect and
do no harm.
To test that optimistic prediction, this essay examines much
of the same information advocates advance in support of civility codes, but
from a less restrictive perspective. In particular, it explores how an
awareness of the stratifications of power and prestige in the legal profession
alters one's assessment of these codes. This exercise reveals several troubling
aspects of the professionalism crisis and strengthens suspicions about the
beneficence of civility codes. Among other things, a critical evaluation
suggests that the organized bars may unconsciously perpetuate the notion that
many of the problems confronting the legal profession are attributable to an
epidemic of bad behavior among attorneys, because doing so serves the interests
of a powerful minority within the profession. That observation compels one to
question to what extent the civility codes embody that minority's collective
biases. If the skewed perceptions of a privileged few are at the heart of these
codes, then they may express flawed values, promote a false community, and
constitute potentially dangerous exercises of hierarchical power.
Exploring the manner in which
civility codes arguably give form and content to the partisan views of the
bar's powerful elite is illuminating in other respects as well. It reveals that
these codes implicate a number of fundamental problems, including: the
fallacies and pitfalls of viewing the profession as an occupation with unified
goals and shared practices; the infirmities of current systems of attorney
regulation and discipline; and the dysfunctional, essentially mistrustful,
relationship between the public and the profession. Consequently, this essay
also contemplates whether an elitist bias explains the drafters' avoidance of
these difficult issues and the resulting superficiality and tentativeness of
their reform efforts.
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Towards conclusion
A class-conscious appraisal of aspirational and mandatory
civility codes suggests that the drafters' diagnosis of the problem may be
erroneous and the proposed cure ineffective. Stylistic changes in the practice
of law may be symptomatic of fundamental alterations in the distributions of
rights and powers in our society.' An era such as this one, characterized by
significant expansions of some rights and contractions of others, may not be an
appropriate time for the old guard or their younger allies to impose
restrictions on lawyers whose behavior is so centrally related to the assertion
and vindication of developing rights.' It may be particularly risky for the
legal profession during this transitional period to attempt to use manners to
cloak conflict and etiquette to suppress overt aggression. The
proletarianization of the legal profession may mean that the profession is
transitioning away from a deference-based hierarchy toward a more egalitarian
occupational community.
In that event, patrician notions of civility would have to
give way to republican ideals of facilitating honest confrontations among
equals and "cultivat[ing] the courage and prudential understanding
necessary [to empower all lawyers] to act and speak publicly in pursuit of some
particular substantive vision of the good. "
