Law Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of Associate Satisfaction, Law Firm Culture, And The Effects Of Billable Hour Requirements - Part One, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers billing practices, the effects of hourly billing pressure, and firm culture as reflected in a survey of associates in Texas law firms. Part I of this article reports the empirical information from the survey. This information includes insight into the toll an increase in billable hour requirements has taken on legal practitioners and the consequent affect on the legal field. Part II discusses what the data means and how it might be used to improve the outlook for attracting and retaining good associates.

Unreasonable Probability Of Error, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

In Strickland v. Washington, the Supreme Court sought to create a uniform standard to guarantee effective assistance of counsel to criminal defendants, to "ensure a fair trial," and to assure the reliability of "a just result."' Justice O'Connor's majority opinion created a two-pronged test for overturning a trial verdict: deficient performance and resulting prejudice. The Court explicitly established a difficult burden for proving deficient performance,² but set a moderate standard for prejudice as the "reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A reasonable probability is a probability sufficient …

In Hell There Will Be Lawyers Without Clients Or Law, Susan P. Koniak, George M. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

More than twenty years ago, moral philosopher Richard Wasserstrom framed the debate in legal ethics by asking two questions. Does the lawyer's duty to zealously represent the client, constrained only by the bounds of the law, render the lawyer "at best systematically amoral and at worst more than occasionally immoral in ... her dealings with the rest of mankind[?]" And is the lawyer's relationship with the client likewise morally tainted in that it generally entails domination by the lawyer over the client rather than mutual respect? Wasserstrom answered both questions affirmatively. Though these questions have preoccupied legal ethics scholars ever …

Is It Educational Malpractice Not To Teach Comparative Legal Ethics?, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the importance of teaching legal ethics in law schools. After a brief introduction, this article outlines several reasons why it is necessary to have formal ethical training in law schools. The article then explains the different methods of teaching legal ethics that are utilized in the United States. The article also details why it is important and how to teaching comparative legal ethics in law schools due to increased globalization. The article concludes by identifying sources, such as the internet, for teaching comparative legal ethics.

Recalling Atticus Finch: Conversations With Practicing Lawyers, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the skills, values, and attitudes that are key to practicing law. Input from practicing attorneys shows that while some traits are essential for all practice areas, other traits are specifically necessary for certain types of attorneys.

Law Professors As Lawyers: Consultants, Of Counsel, And The Ethics Of Self-Flagellation, Rory K. Little

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyer And Public Service, The Historical Perspectives On Pro Bono Lawyering, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, the first way of viewing the lawyer's role was as a member of America's governing class. Second came cause lawyering on behalf of a particular issue. Third, and most recently, arose the idea of pro bono lawyering, a less ambitious incarnation of the governing class lawyer who contributes time to helping cause lawyers. These categories are not rigid: for each individual they may overlap to one degree or another. This framework is preliminary and requires further research and development. Nonetheless, it provides a useful tool for explaining how lawyers-and in particular the heroic lawyers described in this symposium-connect to …

Making Clinical Trials Safer For Human Subjects, Michael S. Baram

Faculty Scholarship

Clinical trials, in which new biotech and other medical products are tested on human subjects, provide much of the data used by the FDA to determine whether the products are suitable for routine use in health care. Thus, the trials are of obvious importance to medical progress and improvement of public health, and to those who have career and financial interests at stake. But clinical trials are also important to the human subjects involved because the products being tested on them may remedy their illnesses, but may also pose risks since the products have usually not been previously tested on …

Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

If there is a religious way to read, is there a religious way to be a lawyer? More and more lawyers, judges and scholars are answering yes to that question. We heard earlier from Cardinal Bevilacqua about the history of the Religious Lawyering Movement, which blossomed in the 1990s. There was writing about the law and religion before that time." We can date religious lawyering as a body of work in mainstream legal literature, as Cardinal Bevilacqua did, to the work of Professor Thomas Shaffer in the 1980s.Why did this movement take off in the 1990s? Again, what accounts for …

Reflections On The Ethics Of Legal Academics: Law Schools As Mdps; Or, Should Law Professors Practice What They Teach Symposium: Ethics Of Law Professors, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

[A member of the House of Commons said in Samuel Johnson's presence] that he paid no regard to the arguments of counsel at the bar of the House of Commons, because they were paid for speaking. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, argument is argument. You cannot help paying regard to their arguments, if they are good, If it were testimony, you might disregard it, if you knew that it were purchased. There is a beautiful image in Bacon upon this subject: testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the hand that draws it. …

Expression And Appearance: A Comment On Hellman, Matthew D. Adler

Faculty Scholarship

Response to, Deborah Hellman, Judging by Appearances: Professional Ethics, Expressive Government, and the Moral Significance of How Things Seem, 60 Maryland Law Review 653 (2001).

Lawyers, Jails, And The Law’S Fake Bargains, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Bar Association Ethics Committees: Are They Broken Conference On Legal Ethics: What Needs Fixing, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the work of bar association ethics committees. These are committees established by bar associations to give advice to lawyers about how to comply with the applicable rules of professional conduct. My question is, are these committees broken? Over the past two decades, several legal academics have concluded that they are. At its harshest, the critique is that ethics committees, typified by the American Bar Association's ("ABA") ethics committee, publish opinions that respond to trivial questions by providing poorly reasoned answers on which nobody can or does rely, and that the reason that the committees' opinions are inadequate …

Fear And Loathing Of Politics In The Legal Academy, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

In a recent lament about Bush v. Gore, Bruce Ackerman feared that the patent groundlessness of the opinion would convince many of a proposition he attributed to critical legal studies: that law is simply a form of politics.

This remark reflects two tendencies prominent at the Yale Law School in recent years: first, a preoccupation with a now extinct and never very successful movement of left legal academics, and second, a tendency to conflate this movement with the legal conservatism of Jusice Scalia and his collaborators at the University of Chicago and the Rehnquist Court.

These tendencies ride high …

Moral Pluck: Legal Ethics In Popular Culture, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Favorable portrayals of lawyers in popular culture tend to adopt a distinctive ethical perspective. This perspective departs radically from the premises of the "Conformist Moralism" exemplified by the official ethics of the American bar and the arguments of the proponents of President Clinton's impeachment. While Conformist Moralism is strongly authoritarian and categorical, popular culture exalts a quality that might be called "Moral Pluck " – a combination of resourcefulness and transgression in the service of basic but informal values. This Essay traces the theme of Moral Pluck through three of the most prominent fictional portrayals of lawyers in recent years …