Law Commons^™

Leaving Law Firms With Client Fees: Florida's Path, Donald J. Weidner

Scholarly Publications

No abstract provided.

Alternative Business Structures: Good For The Public, Good For The Lawyers, Jayne R. Reardon

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

There has been a shift in consumer behavior over the last several decades. To keep up with the transforming consumer, many professions have changed the way they do business. Yet lawyers continue to deliver services the way they have since the founding of our country. Bar associations and legal ethicists have long debated the idea of allowing lawyers to practice in “alternative business structures,” where lawyers and nonlawyers can co-own and co-manage a business to deliver legal services. This Article argues these types of businesses inhibit lawyers’ ability to provide better legal services to the public and that the legal …

Agenda: Free, Prior And Informed Consent: Pathways For A New Millennium, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment, University Of Colorado Boulder. School Of Law. American Indian Law Program

Free, Prior and Informed Consent: Pathways for a New Millennium (November 1)

Presented by the University of Colorado's American Indian Law Program and the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy & the Environment.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), along with treaties, instruments, and decisions of international law, recognizes that indigenous peoples have the right to give "free, prior, and informed consent" to legislation and development affecting their lands, natural resources, and other interests, and to receive remedies for losses of property taken without such consent. With approximately 150 nations, including the United States, endorsing the UNDRIP, this requirement gives rise to emerging standards, obligations, and opportunities …

Will Law Firms Go Public?, Roberta S. Karmel

Roberta S. Karmel

Law in the United States is a big business and big law firms are a global business. Currently, under rules of the American Bar Association (ABA) and most states law, firms are not allowed either to include non-lawyers as partners or accept equity investments from non-lawyers. This Article will argue that (even if law firms retain the form of partnerships) they eventually will accept investments from third parties, and possibly even go public, but this development could lead to a loss of professionalism, as it has with other industries, and could also lead to the end of self-regulation. Among the …

Legitimacy, Accountability, And Partnership: A Model For Advocacy On Third World Environmental Issues, David A. Wirth

David A. Wirth

To date, there has been little effort to define the characteristics of responsible environmental reform efforts by private citizens and organizations in the United States on foreign environmental problems, such as the quality of foreign aid. Moreover, there have been virtually no attempts to identify a principled role for American lawyers in Third World environmental issues. This Essay will respond to these lacunae by articulating a new approach to advocacy based on a partnership model. In Part I, this Essay identifies the need for American public interest advocates to establish partnerships with directly affected groups on Third World environmental issues. …

Consensual Amorous Relationships Between Faculty And Students: The Constitutional Right To Privacy, Elisabeth A. Keller

Elisabeth Keller

Surveys of college students in the United States revealed that a significant number of students thought they had been victims of some form of sexual harassment. Growing awareness of the magnitude, dimensions, and effects of sexual harassment at educational institutions and the potential for institutional liability have prompted educators to adopt policies to avert such problems. The policies typically prohibit sexual harassment of employees and students and alert the university community to the serious effects of sexual harassment and the potential for student exploitation. Some universities have gone beyond establishing regulations directed at widely litigated problems of sexual harassment and …

Slides: Water Needs And Strategies For A Sustainable Future, Shaun Mcgrath

Shifting Baselines and New Meridians: Water, Resources, Landscapes, and the Transformation of the American West (Summer Conference, June 4-6)

Presenter: Shaun McGrath, Program Director, Western Governors’ Association

25 slides

A How To Guide For Incorporating Global And Comparative Perspectives Into The Required Professional Responsibility Course, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article was written for an AALS symposium on "Teaching Legal Ethics" and discusses how to incorporate global and comparative perspectives into the required Professional Responsibility course. The scope of the paper is much broader, however. The first half of the paper explains why global and comparative perspectives are relevant to contemporary law practice. This section explains why global perspectives are relevants to clients and lawyers and explains why lawyer regulators now use a more global approach to regulation than previously. The second half illustrates how one can introduce global and comparative perspectives into a professional responsibility course without taking …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

Breaking The Bank: Revisiting Central Bank Of Denver After Enron And Sarbanes-Oxley, Celia Taylor

ExpressO

No abstract provided.

The Economics Of Limited Liability: An Empirical Study Of New York Law Firms, Scott Baker, Kimberly D. Krawiec

ExpressO

Since the rapid rise in organizational forms for business associations, academics and practitioners have sought to explain the choice of form rationale. Each form contains its own set of default rules that inevitably get factored into this decision, including the extent to which each individual firm owner will be held personally liable for the collective debts and obligations of the firm. The significance of the differences in these default rules continues to be debated. Many commentators have advanced theories, most notably those based on unlimited liability, profit-sharing, and illiquidity, asserting that the partnership form provides efficiency benefits that outweigh any …

German Mdps: Lessons To Learn, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article is the third of four major articles or book chapters that I have written about MDPs. This article focuses on German multidisciplinary partnerships (MDPs) between lawyers and accountants. The German MDP experience is important because Germany is one of the few jurisdictions that expressly permits MDPs and because conferences about World Trade Organization's General Agreement on Trade in Services (the GATS) have cited to Germany when suggesting that other countries' MDP bans may be unnecessarily restrictive. After introducing common MDP regulatory issues, this article focuses on Germany. The article explains Germany's current regulation of MDPs and provides a …

A Primer On Mdps: Should The No Rule Become A New Rule, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article is the second of four major articles or book chapters that I have written about MDPs. "MDPs" refers to multidisciplinary partnerships or multidisciplinary practices between lawyers and nonlawyers. Prior to 1998, virtually all U.S. states had lawyer discipline rules that prohibited a lawyer from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer or practicing law in partnership with a nonlawyer. In 1998, however, the American Bar Association created a Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice to reconsider these rules. One impetus for the creation of this Commission was the increasingly large numbers of lawyers who were working for the Big 5 Accounting …

Professional Responsibility And Organization Of The Family Business: The Lawyer As Intermediary, Alysa Christmas Rollock

Indiana Law Journal

Symposium: Law and the New American Family Held at Indiana University School of Law - Bloomington Apr. 4, 1997

Fiduciary Duty Contracts In Unincorporated Firms, Larry E. Ribstein

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Freedom Of Contract, Fiduciary Duties, And Partnerships: The Bargain Principle And The Law Of Agency, J. Dennis Hynes

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Naked Emperor: A Corporate Lawyer Looks At Rupa's Fiduciary Provisions, Lawrence E. Mitchell

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

"Assume A Rather Large Boat . . ": The Mess We Have Made Of Partnership Law, Allan W. Vestal

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fiduciary Duty, Contract, And Waiver In Partnerships And Limited Liability Companies, Richard A. Booth Marbury Research Professor Of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Among the controversies swirling around the promulgations of new uniform statutes governing partnerships and LLCs is the question whether and to what extend fiduciary duties should be made mandatory or waivable. Although courts and commentators have not traditionally focused on the costs of fiduciary duties, the costs are significant in that such duties may preclude agents from engaging in other legitimate ventures. Indeed, fiduciary duty may be used by those to whom it is owed to prevent competition or extort side benefits form participants. Mandatory duties effectively require participants who may identify multiple business opportunities to overinvest their human capital …