Introduction: Lawyers as Problem- Solvers in Crisis

This edited collection covers the role of lawyers dealing with crisis situations. While some scholarly inquiry has explored the issue of lawyers providing advice to leaders in federal disasters and developed best practices for such situations, this work strives to define the new and emerging field of crisis lawyering more generally. It explores best practices in a range of other settings to determine whether they are applicable more broadly and whether new best practices emerge from a review of those contexts. The chapters highlight the work of lawyers under crisis situations as a way to stress the important role that lawyers can play in addressing some of the most important challenges of the age: climate change, natural disasters, and major accidents; threats to freedom of the press and the rule of law; economic inequality; police-community relations; and legal ethics, conflicts of interest, and relationships with clients, to name just a few of the issues this volume addresses.