Toward an Ethical Turn in Legal Strategy

Abstract

Legal strategy literature has grown significantly in the past two decades. Scholars now consider how law can be a source of value or competitive advantage from a variety of perspectives. With books, special issues, and other projects focusing on law and strategy, the field has generated a foundational body of work from which to advance and refine its ideas. One of those refinements should enquire into understanding the ethical antecedents and implications of legal strategy. Despite this growth in literature, there are too few articles that address the question of ethics directly. This chapter first explores the difficulties that may arise from advocating legal strategies without the guidance of ethical implications. After a review of the foundational literature, it highlights works that have made ethical contributions to legal strategy. It goes on to consider how scholars can implement a purposeful engagement with legal strategy. This chapter concludes that integration of ethics into legal strategy can benefit this evolving literature and encourage new directions in the field that are both productive and provocative.