Legal Profession Commons^™

The Path Between Sebastian's Hospitals: Fostering Reconciliation After A Tragedy, Jonathan R. Cohen

Jonathan R. Cohen

On October 8, 2007, Horst and Luisa Ferrero brought their healthy but short, three-year-old son Sebastian to a university hospital for a “routine” test to determine whether he lacked human growth hormone. Two days later, following a tragic string of errors, Sebastian was pronounced brain dead. Approximately two weeks later, the hospital offered a detailed public apology to the parents for Sebastian’s death. Several months after the apology, the parents began working collaboratively with the hospital to improve patient safety at the hospital and to advocate for a new children’s hospital in their community. This paper is a case study …

Time For A Top-Tier Law School In Arkansas, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

A simple change in state law could improve the quality of legal education in Arkansas and the quality of legal services available to our consumers - and save significant amounts of taxpayers' money. With an Afterword on academic freedom. Also available from Advance Arkansas Institute website.

"Unnatural Deaths," Criminal Sanctions, And Medical Quality Improvement In Japan, Robert B. Leflar

Robert B Leflar

A worldwide awakening to the high incidence of preventable harm resulting from medical care, combined with pressure on hospitals and physicians from liability litigation, has turned international attention to the need for better structures to resolve medical disputes in a way that promotes medical safety and honesty toward patients. The civil justice system in the United States, in particular, is criticized as inefficient, arbitrary, and sometimes punitive. It is charged with undermining sound medical care by encouraging wasteful expenditures through defensive medicine; by driving information about medical mistakes underground where it escapes analysis, undercutting quality improvement efforts; and by forcing …

Bad Briefs, Bad Law, Bad Markets: Documenting The Poor Quality Of Plaintiffs’ Briefs, Its Impact On The Law, And The Market Failure It Reflects, Scott A. Moss

Scott A Moss

For a major field, employment discrimination suffers surprisingly low-quality plaintiff’s lawyering. This Article details a study of several hundred summary judgment briefs, finding as follows: (1) the vast majority of plaintiffs’ briefs omit available caselaw rebutting key defense arguments, many falling far below basic professional standards with incoherent writing or no meaningful research; (2) low-quality briefs lose at over double the rate of good briefs; and (3) bad briefs skew caselaw evolution, because even controlling for won/loss rate, bad plaintiffs’ briefs far more often yield decisions crediting debatable defenses. These findings are puzzling; in a major legal service market, how …

The Law Of Corporate Purpose, David Yosifon

David G. Yosifon

Delaware corporate law requires corporate directors to manage firms for the benefit of shareholders, and not for any other constituency. Delaware jurists have been clear about this in their case law, and they are not coy about it in extra-judicial settings, such as speeches directed at law students and practicing members of the corporate bar. Nevertheless, the reader of leading corporate law scholarship is continually exposed to the scholarly assertion that the law is ambiguous or ambivalent on this point, or even that case law affirmatively empowers directors to pursue non-shareholder interests. It is shocking, and troubling, for corporate law …

A Study Of The Relationship Between Bar Admissions Data And Subsequent Lawyer Discipline, Leslie C. Levin, Christine Zozula, Peter Siegelman

Leslie C. Levin

The research reported here uses information from the admissions files of lawyers admitted to the Connecticut bar from 1989 to 1992 to compare those who were disciplined with those who were not disciplined. It analyzes information reported during the bar admissions process that may predict later lawyer misconduct including, inter alia, prior criminal history, problem credit history, prior employment history, academic misconduct, substance abuse, and psychological history. The study reveals that many of the responses on the admissions application are statistically associated with an elevated risk of future discipline. Nevertheless, these variables nevertheless make very poor predictors of subsequent misconduct. …

When Socrates Meets Confucius: Teaching Creative And Critical Thinking Across Cultures Through Multilevel Socratic Method, Erin Ryan

Erin Ryan