Practice Style and Successful Legal Mobilization

Bloom talks about the making of a great cause lawyer. Perhaps not surprisingly, dedication, strong political ties, and superb legal skills all play a role in the making of a great cause lawyer, but so does a somewhat less obvious quality, which Marc Galanter described several years ago as practice "style." However, in these case studies, it suggests that the making of a great cause lawyer depends, in part, on practice style. Put differently, how a lawyer approaches legal practice seems to matter for purposes of legal mobilization. In these cases, cause lawyers were more effective at using the law to advance a political agenda when they adopted a more flexible practice style that may more closely resemble that of an "ordinary" lawyer.