Law Commons^™

What Law Must Lawyers Know?, Joan W. Howarth

Scholarly Works

What constitutes the body of legal knowledge that every lawyer must
possess? I used to know, or think I did, but no longer. I suspect no one else
knows either. This difficult question is not just an intriguing theoretical
matter but also an urgent, practical problem. Licensing regulators assume
that minimal competence in any profession requires certain fundamental
knowledge, skills, and abilities.Bar examiners must determine what
knowledge, skills, and abilities are necessary for minimum competence as
an attorney and then design tests and other requirements to attempt to align
licensure with minimum competence. Today’s tangled attorney licensing
puzzle cannot be …

Flying Without Wings, Eleanor Lanier

Scholarly Works

Because of Georgia’s unique court structure and political challenges, state advocates were unable to secure funding for a spot in the WINGS nest. But there is good news. The bonds we forged over our many years of advocacy on guardianship issues, and our effort to pull together the (unsuccessful) WINGS application, helped a few of our ideas take flight. This article highlights one highly successful and easily replicable effort that can be undertaken for a local court, in a region or at the state level, depending on resources and interest.

Access To The Civil Court System For Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse In Georgia: Observations And Recommendations From The Clinical Legal Education Experience, Emma M. Hetherington, Michael Nunnally

Scholarly Works

Founded in January 2016, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (the CEASE Clinic) represents survivors of child sexual abuse in juvenile court dependency matters and civil litigation and is the first of its kind in the nation. The CEASE Clinic was established through a generous donation by Georgia Law alumnus Marlan Wilbanks (JD ‘84) in response to a new Georgia law known as the Hidden Predator Act (the HPA) that went into effect on July 1, 2015. The HPA extended the statute of limitations for civil claims arising out of acts of child sexual abuse by providing a …

Ringing Changes: Systems Thinking About Legal Licensing, Joan W. Howarth, Judith Welch Wegner

Scholarly Works

Part I examines core assumptions associated with licensing systems as well as associated ambiguities. In particular, it acknowledges multiple understandings about what “competence” is and differing assumptions about how to evaluate or measure it. Part I thus sets forth important predicates for our argument that only a multi-faceted licensing system can do what is needed in assuring minimal competence, and that not all forms of competence are best measured by traditional licensing examinations.

Part II raises the possibility of creating a post-first-year examination designed to assess critical thinking in the context of the first-year curriculum. It also considers ways in …

Learning From Feminist Judgments: Lessons In Language And Advocacy, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford

Scholarly Works

Judicial decision-making is not a neutral and logical enterprise that involves applying clear rules to agreed-upon facts. Legal educators can and should help students learn more about how judges actually go about making their decisions. The study of re-imagined judicial decisions, such as the alternative judgments from various Feminist Judgments Projects, can enrich the study of law in multiple ways. First, seeing a written decision that differs from the original can help students think “outside the box” constructed by the original opinion by showing them a concrete example of another perspective written in judicial language. Second, the rewritten judgments show …

Reflecting Clinics At 50: Reports From The Field, Russell C. Gabriel

Scholarly Works

For lawyers, learning law by practicing law is customary. In the world of legal education, learning from practice is situated in both acceptance and opposition. There are practical arguments in its favor—the practicing bar wants law graduates to be “practice ready,” and theoretical arguments—understanding how law operates in the real world yields a clearer understanding of law itself, how it maintains social and economic structures, and how it impacts individuals. At the University of Georgia, law students, hungry for a legal education and a bar license, have been learning from practice in the Law School’s clinical programs for over fifty …

Clinical Syllabi As Demonstration Of Best Practices Implementation, Jean Goetz Mangan, Fernanda Mackay

Scholarly Works

This Article posits that the University of Georgia School of Law for Clinical Programs course syllabi demonstrate implementation of recommendations found in leading works that advocate for change in traditional legal education. This Article reviews some high points of legal education reform with a focus on clinical legal education and then discusses the role of syllabi in the classroom and the potential within the document that many professors miss. This Article then turns to using syllabi to measure the extent that the clinics are implementing instruction that addresses all three apprenticeships as defined in the Carnegie Report.. To assess the …

Why Is The Protective Order Project Still In Business; Or, If The Family Justice Clinic Has Been At It So Long, Why Hasn’T Anything Changed? Domestic Violence As A Continuing Societal Concern, Christine M. Scartz, Chelsea Reese

Scholarly Works

This Article explores the Georgia Law Family Violence and the continuing societal concern surrounding domestic violence.

Teaching Tomorrow’S Lawyers Through A (Semi-) Generalist, (Mostly-) Individual Client Poverty Law Clinic: Reflections On Five Years Of The Community Health Law Partnership, Jason A. Cade

Scholarly Works

Design options when starting a live-client clinic from scratch can be somewhat overwhelming. Should the clinic focus on systemic impact or individual representation? Appellate work or hearings? Should the clinic specialize or cover multiple legal issues? Another set of issues concerns how the clinic should find and accept its clients, and whether students should have a role in the intake process. The list of choices goes on. In this Essay, written for the Georgia Law Review’s Online Issue celebrating 50 years of clinics at the University of Georgia School of Law, I describe how I have navigated these and other …