This year’s Annual Legal Ethics Symposium, hosted by the Amsterdam Centre on the Legal Profession and Access to Justice (ACLPA), will focus on W. Bradley Wendel’s latest book Canceling Lawyers. It aims to bring together both academics and practitioners to discuss the increasing critique of lawyers and the practice of ‘canceling’ (or public shaming) lawyers.

Lawyers take pride in a professional tradition of representing unpopular clients, understanding it as a contribution to the rule of law and the practice of toleration in a polarized society. This does not mean that lawyers are fully insulated from criticism for the clients they represent. Much of the frustration experienced by lawyers who are criticized for representing unpopular clients arises from what lawyers see as the public’s inability to understand the rule of law and the function of the legal system in resolving conflicts over rights and justice.

In his book ‘Canceling Lawyers’, W. Bradley Wendel draws on a series of case studies to argue that there is genuine value in a system of formal law that aims at settling social disagreement, but that is not the whole story. Public criticism of lawyers may reflect the sense that the legal system has fallen short of ideals of fairness and inclusiveness. Accepting a certain amount of public criticism is necessary to avoid a dangerous isolation of the legal profession from accountability to the broader political community, or from the humanity of lawyers being submerged by their professional role.