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Professor Richard Moorhead

Professor of Law and Professional Ethics

7063

01392 727063

Richard Moorhead is an empirical legal scholar who has worked on lawyers’ ethics and regulation, the courts and legal services, and access to justice. Interdisciplinary in approach, he has worked alongside economists, management scientists, and psychologists in such work, as well as with judges, Parliamentarians, policy-makers, and, professional regulators and representatives. He blogs at  lawyerwatch and (on the mainstay of his current work, the Post Office Scandal) and regularly features in professional and national press.

Past research includes projects on lawyers’ ethics (for instance his 2018 book is on the Ethics of In-house Lawyers, with Vaughan and Godhino); litigants in person; quality in legal aid; the effects of funding regimes on lawyer behavior; and, legal aid reform (community legal services, public defenders and contracting in particular).

His teaching has championed new approaches to looking at lawyers and the future of legal practice. He was on the Data Evidence and Science Board at the Ministry of Justice and was a previous member of the Civil Justice Council, as well as the Legal Services Consultative Panel. Has advised three Select Committees legal aid inquiries and advises the Women and Equalities Select Committee on NDAs.

He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2019 and a fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts in May 2016. He sits on the editorial board of the International Journal of the Legal Profession, and the advisory boards of the Journal of Law and Society and Ethics and Behaviour.

Research interests

  • Lawyers, professional competence, and professional ethics
  • Design, evauation and technology in the delivery of law
  • Access to justice, the courts, and alternatives
  • The Post Office Scandal
  • Lawyers and corporate governance

External impact and engagement

Richard has significant experience of engaging with:

  • National and international governments (on access to justice and legal services regulation)
  • Regulators of legal services and financial services
  • Leading practitioners and practitioner groups
  • Lawyers and in-house working in business, government, and the third sector
  • Innovatice legal service providers and organisations working in the law tech world
  • Media and press locally, nationally, and internationally

Those engagements have concentrated on legal education, professional ethics and regulation, non-disclosure agreements, and access to justice.

 

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