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Taking Myths Seriously: An Essay For Lawyers, Donald C. Langevoort
Taking Myths Seriously: An Essay For Lawyers, Donald C. Langevoort
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
The specific idea I want to explore has to do with the motivational power of myths and illusions on a personal level. To take a mundane example, people are often told to "believe in themselves." The underlying idea seems to be that high self confidence is an important motivator, especially in competitive settings like school, sports, business and the professions. This is not the idle talk of family and friends; millions of dollars are spent each year by people and their employers on motivational books and programs that offer endless variations on this simple theme in an effort to bolster …
Defending Defending: The Case For Unmitigated Zeal On Behalf Of People Who Do Terrible Things, Abbe Smith
Defending Defending: The Case For Unmitigated Zeal On Behalf Of People Who Do Terrible Things, Abbe Smith
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Although defending defending may be an endless pursuit, I cannot help taking it on. I am, after all, a defender myself, and defending fellow defenders seems to go with the territory. Of course, attacks on criminal defenders do not come out of nowhere - difficult and complex questions often arise in criminal defense work. Unfortunately, the questions that are raised in the aftermath of a high profile case such as the Abner Louima case are usually the easy ones - questions that have more to do with the nature of the adversarial system than with the values or ethics of …
Hard Choices: Thoughts For New Lawyers, David C. Vladeck
Hard Choices: Thoughts For New Lawyers, David C. Vladeck
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
Rarely do law schools challenge students to examine their assumptions about what being a lawyer really means. Seldom do law schools undertake a probing examination of the role that lawyers play in society and the choices that lawyers have to make in terms of how they spend their working lives. For example, how many of you have a clue about the basic facts of our profession? How many lawyers there are in the United States? What do they do? What percentage work for the government? For large law firms? For small firms? For legal services organizations? For public interest groups? …