Law Commons^™

The Price Of Misdemeanor Representation, Erica J. Hashimoto

William & Mary Law Review

Nobody disputes either the reality of excessive caseloads in indigent defense systems or their negative effects. More than forty years after Gideon v. Wainwright, however, few seem willing to accept that additional resources will not magically appear to solve the problem. Rather, concerned observers demand more funds while state and local legislators resist those entreaties in the face of political resistance and pressures to balance government budgets. Recognizing that indigent defense systems must operate in a world of limited resources, states should reduce the number of cases streaming into those systems by significantly curtailing the appointment of counsel in low-level …

Has A New Day Dawned For Indigent Defense In Virginia?, Robert E. Shepherd Jr.

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Kidsvoice: A Multidisciplinary Approach To Child Advocacy, Scott Hollander, Jonathan Budd

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

There is growing recognition that effective child advocacy requires a broad range of knowledge that often goes well beyond the legal needs of the child. This Essay details the multidisciplinary approach to child advocacy that KidsVoice, a Pittsburgh legal services organization representing almost 5000 dependent children each year, has implemented to better develop uniquely tailored recommendations regarding which placement and services might create better possibilities of success for each child and family.

The Gender Trap: Flexible Work In Corporate Legal Practice, Margaret Thornton, Joanne Bagust

Osgoode Hall Law Journal

Despite the fact that women comprise well over 50 per cent of law graduates in many parts of the world, women lawyers continue to be clustered disproportionately in the lower echelons of the profession. This paper considers the role of flexible work as a gender equity strategy and is illuminated by interviews with lawyers in elite corporate firms in Australia. It is argued that far from being a panacea, flexible work is being invoked to confine women to subordinate roles and to restrict access to partnerships. Not only is there a residual suspicion of the feminine in positions of authority …

The Advocate Vol. 12 No. 2

The Advocate

No abstract provided.

Convocation On The Face Of The Profession: Judicial Institute On Professionalism In The Law, Stephen J. Friedman

Pace Law Review

No abstract provided.

Class Actions And The Poor, Henry Rose

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] “Imagine that you are a legal aid lawyer in America whose services are funded by the Federal Legal Services Corporation (LSC). You interview a prospective client and learn that she was recently laid off from her job; she applied for and was denied Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits by the state; and she is in a desperate financial situation. You accept the client’s case to determine whether she has a legal basis to challenge the denial of her UI claim. You research your client’s problem and form the opinion that the denial of her UI claim was based on a …

Outsourcing And The Globalizing Legal Profession, Jayanth K. Krishnan

William & Mary Law Review

The issue of outsourcing jobs abroad stirs great emotion among Americans. Economic free-traders fiercely defend outsourcing as a positive for the U.S. economy, while critics contend that corporate desire for low wages, alone, drives this practice. In this study Professor Krishnan focuses on a specific type of outsourcing, one which has received scant scholarly attention to date-legal outsourcing. Indeed, because the work is often paralegal in nature, many see the outsourcing of legal jobs overseas as no different from other types of outsourcing. But by using case studies of both the United States and India, the latter of which is …

The Centrality Of Metaphor In Legal Analysis And Communication: An Introduction, David T. Ritchie

Mercer Law Review

Law, as a domain of human enterprise, is fundamentally discursive in nature. As such, understanding the elements of legal discourse, both analytical and communicative, is vital to understanding the nature of the enterprise. Metaphorical reasoning, and the communication of that reasoning, is one such element. Perhaps metaphor is one among many elements of legal discourse. In this view, metaphor theory would take its place alongside logic, narrative theory, rhetoric, and so on.

Surfing The Next Wave Of Outsourcing: The Ethics Of Sending Domestic Legal Work To Foreign Countries Under New York City Opinion 2006-3, Keith Woffinden

BYU Law Review

No abstract provided.

Mind, Metaphor, Law, Mark L. Johnson

Mercer Law Review

Change, as John Dewey observed, is a basic fact of human experience. We are temporal creatures, and the situations we find ourselves in, the situations that make up the fabric of our lives, are always evolving and developing. The omnipresence of change throughout all human experience thus creates a fundamental problem for law, namely, how can law preserve its integrity over time, while managing to address the newly emerging circumstances that continually arise throughout our history? If, following one extreme, we think of law as fixed, static, and univocal in its content, then law runs the risk of losing its …

Re-Embodying Law, Steven L. Winter

Mercer Law Review

It was fun to watch the audience of mostly first-year students during Mark Johnson's presentation. Seven weeks into their first semester of law school, this was clearly the most fun they had had so far. And it was easy to see why: law school takes place "from the neck up," so to speak. It is so relentlessly about reason abstracted from the ordinary interests, passions, and other embodied considerations of everyday (not to mention college) life. This deracination of law is ritualized metaphorically in the black robes that enshroud our judges' bodies as if to say, "See, it is all …

Question And Answer Period Of Symposium Participants

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

Against Acting 'Humanely', Michael Goldberg

Mercer Law Review

Who could possibly be against acting 'humanely'?

I, for one, am willing to be charged with such an offense, for the charge is too broad. What precisely does it mean to act 'humanely'? Name some cases of exemplary individuals acting 'humanely' to give some kind of context for the charge; furnish some case histories that depict specific human beings who stand as virtual metaphors of 'humanity at its best.' I maintain such narratives as these are indispensable if our talk of acting 'humanely' is to have any real content. They provide the various contexts within which we can see what …

Experience Matters: The Rise Of A Supreme Court Bar And Its Effect On Certiorari, Joseph W. Swanson

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

The Ethical Mine Field: Corporate Internal Investigations And Individual Assertions Of The Attorney-Client Privilege, Lawton P. Cummings

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Young Associates In Trouble, William D. Henderson, David Zaring

Michigan Law Review

Large law firms have reputations as being tough places to work, and the larger the firm, the tougher the firm. Yet, notwithstanding the grueling hours and the shrinking prospects of partnership, these firms perennially attract a large proportion of the nation's top law school graduates. These young lawyers could go anywhere but choose to work at large firms. Why do they do so if law firms are as inhospitable as their reputations suggest? Two recent novels about the lives of young associates in large, prestigious law firms suggest that such a rational calculation misapprehends the costs. Law professor Kermit Roosevelt's …

Tending The Bar: The "Good Character" Requirement For Law Society Admission, Alice Woolley

Dalhousie Law Journal

Every Canadian law society requires thatapplicants for bar admission be of "good character" The author assesses the administration of this requirement and its statedpurposes ofensuring ethical conductby lawyers, protecting the public and maintaining the profession's reputation. In particular, the premise underlying the use of the good character requirement to fulfill those purposes - that character is the "well-spring of professional conduct in lawyers" - is subjected to critical examination through the theoretical principles of Artistotelian virtue ethics and the empirical evidence of social psychology. The primary thesis of this paper is that as currently justified, administered and applied the good …

Judging Magic: Can You See The Sleight Of Hand?, Rebecca Johnson

Michigan Law Review

Cultural critic bell hooks says, "Movies make magic. They change things. They take the real and make it into something else right before our very eyes." Movies do not, of course, have an exclusive hold on this ability to change one thing into something else. Law, too, possesses this power. Certainly, one must acknowledge some significant differences in the "magic" of filmic and legal texts. For the most part, as willing consumers of cultural products, we "choose" to subject ourselves to the magic of film. We sit in a darkened theater and let ourselves be taken away to a different …

Capital Defense Lawyers: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Sean D. O'Brien

Michigan Law Review

Professor Welsh S. White's book Litigating in the Shadow of Death: Defense Attorneys in Capital Cases collects the compelling stories of "a new band of dedicated lawyers" that has "vigorously represented capital defendants, seeking to prevent their executions" (p.3). Sadly, Professor White passed away on New Year's Eve, 2005, days before the release of his final work. To the well-deserved accolades of Professor White that were recently published in the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, I can only add a poignant comment in a student blog that captures his excellence as a scholar and educator: "I wanted to …

The Bureaucratic Court, Benjamin C. Mizer

Michigan Law Review

In August 2006, the New York Times caused a stir by reporting that the number of female law clerks at the United States Supreme Court has fallen sharply in the first full Term in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is no longer on the bench. In an era in which nearly fifty percent of all law school graduates are women, the Times reported, less than twenty percent of the clerks in the Court's 2006 Term - seven of thirty-seven - are women. In interviews, Justices Souter and Breyer viewed the sharp drop in the number of female clerks as an …

Forming The Human Person: Can The Seminary Model Save The Legal Profession?, Stephen M. Siptroth

Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal

No abstract provided.

A Lawyer's Lament: Law Schools And The "Profession" Of Law, Wayne S. Hyatt

Vanderbilt Law Review

Back in the mid-eighties, I offered a first year, second semester "un-elective" called American Legal Theory and American Legal Education. It scrunched together two history courses I had taught irregularly before. I liked the way the two topics fit together and still do, but with so many recalcitrant law students enrolled in it, the course was an unmitigated disaster. As is always the case with such attempts at offering perspective, amidst the shambles I had acquired at least a few devoted students. At the end of the last class one of them came up to the front to ask a …

Lawyers And Prophetic Justice, Timothy Floyd

Mercer Law Review

The statue of Lady Justice, a blindfold over her eyes, holding scales in one hand and a sword in the other, is our traditional visual image of justice. The scales convey the idea of neutrality and the weighing of competing interests; they emphasize rationality and the application of neutral principles in decision making. The blindfold emphasizes equality before the law, that the law is dispassionate and objective, and that decision making is untainted by bias. The statue also implies the stability and permanence of the justice system.

In my experience with lawyers, justice is not a regular topic in our …

Client Confidentiality, Professional Privilege And Online Communication: Potential Implications Of The Barton Decision, Kelcey Nichols

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In a recent case of first impression, Barton v. U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that an online communication involving an online intake form filled out by prospective clients gave rise to an attorney-client relationship governed by the duty of confidentiality and subject to attorney-client-privilege. The Ninth Circuit’s multi-factored analysis suggests a modified framework for evaluating when the duty of confidentiality and attorney-client relationship can be formed through online communications. This Article discusses Barton’s implications for attorneys and law firms that communicate with clients and …

Spotlight On Public Interest Attorneys, Janelle Skaloud

Public Interest Law Reporter

No abstract provided.

Elite Law Firm Mergers And Reputational Competition, Bruce E. Aronson

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Although rapid law firm growth has persisted since the 1980s, the acceleration of this trend over the last decade by means of mergers is puzzling. Why would normally conservative law firms embark on a merger strategy that appears to encompass significant risk and uncertain benefits? Is this trend a peculiarly U.S. phenomenon?

Most of the popular explanations for law firm mergers focus on a single factor: Law firms everywhere cite strikingly similar reasons based on a presumed client demand for "one-stop shopping." This Article contributes to providing a more robust, multi-causal explanation for law firm behavior through a comparative study …

Globalization Of Law Firms: A Survey Of The Literature And A Research Agenda For Further Study, D. Daniel Sokol

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Internationale expansion of law firms plays a critical role in understanding the business of law and the nature of globalization. This article responds to the articles by Carole Silver and Len Bierman and Michael Hitt on law firm expansion in this symposium issue on the Globalization of the Legal Profession. The essay utilizes management studies' theoretical work on internationalization and applies it to law firm expansion to explain law firm strategic decision-making. The author creates a six part taxonomy for types of law firm expansion and provides a snapshot of the increasing U.S./UK. dominance of capital markets, corporate and …

Globalization Of Legal Practice In The Internet Age, Leonard Bierman, Michael A. Hitt

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

The Internet's global reach has had a significant impact on the legal profession. This essay explains a few of the key developments in this area, including: competition fueled by outsourcing legal work to lower-wage earning lawyers around the world, "virtual work" changing client interaction and attorney work schedules, law firm reputation as a result of information availability on the Internet, work-product monitoring and the commoditization of legal services, and work force diversity spurred by the influence of international clients.

Globalization of The Legal Profession, Symposium. Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington, April 6, 2006

Ethical Codes And Cultural Context: Ensuring Legal Ethics In The Global Law Firm, Laurence Etherington, Robert Lee

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

There are doubtless many practical and professional problems that arise in the global legal practice, but this paper suggests that not least of these are issues of legal ethics, in part generated by the global context and not easily amenable to resolution by reference to any single code within the "home" or "host" jurisdiction. For example, there may be difficulties in isolating precisely what those ethical obligations might comprise. These obligations might be rooted in the requirements of local law, but they might arise equally from the values and expectations of the client, or from other lawyers whether inside or …