Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law

"As the Chair of the Judicial Institute on Professionalism in the Law, I am proud to introduce you to the Institute and our web site.

The Institute’s mandate is to increase the level of professional values and ethical behavior in the State by fostering scholarship, advocacy, and open debate on these issues; and also to increase public awareness of and confidence in the high caliber of the attorneys who serve them.

In the early 1990’s, many prominent attorneys and judges grew concerned about how lawyers were perceived in New York State. In the popular culture, lawyers routinely were assumed to be dishonest, greedy or incompetent. In response, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye created and charged a commission with investigating issues relating to professionalism in the law in New York State.

That commission concluded that the professionalism of lawyers in New York is, in fact, extraordinarily high, but that ongoing changes in the profession and in the culture at large are putting enormous pressure on that professionalism. The commission recommended that these pressures be addressed on an ongoing basis to nurture, reinforce and improve the high standards of the profession.

The court system created the Institute in 1999 as a permanent and official body to study and analyze professionalism in New York. This permanence provides the Institute with the institutional and intellectual capital to fulfill its mandate, in more depth and breadth than prior ad hoc Bar Association committees and blue ribbon commissions.

A hallmark of the Institute’s work has been to bring together members of the bar and the academy to engage in robust, frank, and continuing dialogue about what it means to be a lawyer in America at the beginning of the 21st Century.

I invite you to explore our web site, contact us, and share your thoughts as we continue the Institute’s work."

- Louis Craco