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Pro Bono Newsletter, University Of Michigan Law School Oct 2012

Pro Bono Newsletter, University Of Michigan Law School

Newsletters

Fall 2012 issue of the University of Michigan Law School Pro Bono Program's newsletter.


The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz Sep 2012

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …


The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos Sep 2012

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …


Pro Bono Newsletter, University Of Michigan Law School Apr 2012

Pro Bono Newsletter, University Of Michigan Law School

Newsletters

Spring 2012 issue of the University of Michigan Law School Pro Bono Program's newsletter


Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak Apr 2012

Agency And Equity: Why Do We Blame Clients For Their Lawyers' Mistakes, Adam Liptak

Michigan Law Review

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy. This theory holds that the lawyer is the client's agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is …


Providing Capital For Law Firms In A Credit Crisis: Non-Lawyer Equity Ownership, Brett Novick Jan 2012

Providing Capital For Law Firms In A Credit Crisis: Non-Lawyer Equity Ownership, Brett Novick

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Last year, a New York federal district court dismissed a lawsuit by Jacoby & Meyers LLP attacking a New York law that prevents non-lawyers from owning an equity interest in law firms. On November 21, 2012, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit resuscitated the lawsuit, remanding the case to the district court and granting Jacoby & Meyers LLP leave to amend its complaint. Non-lawyers owning an equity interest in law firms is not a new idea, as countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom already allow it, and the United States should follow their example to …


Efficiency-Wage Theory And Law Firm Pay, Dongyu "Eddie" Wang Jan 2012

Efficiency-Wage Theory And Law Firm Pay, Dongyu "Eddie" Wang

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform Caveat

Every first-year law student knows that Big Law pays $160,000 a year. In fact, this number is likely the biggest incentive for applying in the minds of most law-school hopefuls. Taking New York City as an example, a quick look at Vault’s salary data reveals that, indeed, the large majority of New York firms with available salary data pay first-year associates exactly $160,000.


Behind Closed Doors: Irb's And The Making Of Ethical Research, Xiaomeng Zhang Jan 2012

Behind Closed Doors: Irb's And The Making Of Ethical Research, Xiaomeng Zhang

Law Librarian Scholarship

In the late 1700s, English physician Edward Jenner intentionally exposed his infant son to swinepox and an eight-year-old boy to cowpox in order to observe whether they would become immune to related smallpox, a disease. While modern history of human experimentation can be traced back to the eighteenth century, the topic did not engage significant public attention until 1946, when the Nuremberg trials disclosed horrific medical experiments carried out by Nazi scientists. Now, almost all research involving human subjects is subject to prior review and ongoing monitoring by institutional review boards, or IRBs. Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making …


Child Representation In America: Progress Report From The National Quality Improvement Center, Donald N. Duquette, Julian Darwall Jan 2012

Child Representation In America: Progress Report From The National Quality Improvement Center, Donald N. Duquette, Julian Darwall

Articles

Few dispute that children in the child welfare system need effective representation. In October 2009, the U.S. Children's Bureau named the University of Michigan Law School the National Quality Improvement Center on the Representation of Children in the Child Welfare System (QIC-ChildRep). The QIC-ChildRep is a five-year, multimillion dollar project, charged with gathering, developing, and communicating knowledge on child representation. In addition, the QIC-ChildRep is tasked with promoting a consensus on the role of the child's legal representative and providing one of the first random assignment experimental design research projects on the legal representation of children.


Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Illness: Reflections On The Role And Responsibilities Of The Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem, Frank E. Vandervort Jan 2012

Child Welfare Cases Involving Mental Illness: Reflections On The Role And Responsibilities Of The Lawyer-Guardian Ad Litem, Frank E. Vandervort

Articles

Child welfare cases involving mental illness suffered either by a child or his parent can be among the most difficult and perplexing that a child’s lawyerguardian ad litem (L-GAL) will handle. They may present daunting problems of accessing necessary and appropriate services as well as questions about whether and when such mental health problems can be resolved or how best to manage them. They also require the L-GAL to carefully consider crucially important questions—rarely with all the information one would like to have and too often with information that comes late in the case, is fragmented or glaringly incomplete. This …


Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane Jan 2012

Building Resilience In Foster Children: The Role Of The Child's Advocate, Frank E. Vandervort, James Henry, Mark A. Sloane

Articles

This Article provides an introduction to, and brief overview of trauma, its impact upon foster children, and steps children's advocates" can take to lessen or ameliorate the impact of trauma upon their clients. This Article begins in Part 11 by defining relevant terms. Part III addresses the prevalence of trauma among children entering the child welfare system. Part IV considers the neurodevelopmental (i.e., the developing brain) impact of trauma on children and will explore how that trauma may manifest emotionally and behaviorally. With this foundation in place, Part V discusses the need for a comprehensive trauma assessment including a thorough …


Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas Jan 2012

Learning From The Unique And Common Challenges: Clinical Legal Education In Jordan, Nisreen Mahasneh, Kimberly A. Thomas

Articles

Legal education worldwide is undergoing scrutiny for its failure to graduate students who have the problem-solving abilities, skills, and professional values necessary for the legal profession.1 Additionally, law schools at universities in the Middle East have found themselves in an unsettled environment, where greater demands for practical education are exacerbated by several factors such as high levels of youth unemployment. More specifically, in Jordan there is a pressing need for universities to respond to this criticism and to accommodate new or different methods of legal education. Clinical legal education is one such method.3 We use the term "clinical legal education" …