Legal Profession Commons^™

Putting The Lawyer First: Framing Well-Being In Law As An Ethical Dilemma, Aric Short

Faculty Scholarship

A disturbingly high percentage of our students continue to be unwell. In the most recent and comprehensive survey of law student well-being in 2021, almost 70% of law students responded that, in the past twelve months, they believed they needed to seek help for emotional or mental health problems. Embedded screening tools in the survey suggested that 34% of respondents were clinically depressed and 54% suffered from clinical anxiety. 44% of respondents reported being drunk in the past thirty days, 33% had engaged in binge drinking in the preceding two weeks, and 38% had smoked marijuana in the past twelve …

A Perfect Storm For Legal Education: Privatization, Polarization, And Pedagogy, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Today, the legal profession faces new challenges to its integrity and legitimacy due to technological change, rising political polarization, and a stratified bar. In this Article, I first explore how technological innovations are undermining lawyers’ claims to a unique monopoly based on expert professionalism. These technologies are designed to transform routinized law practice in ways that improve efficiency. With little focus on attorneys’ obligations to serve the greater good, technology entrepreneurs emphasize practical advantages over traditional forms of representation. These proponents promise reduced costs and superior results through a single-minded commitment to market dynamics. Those promises in turn depend on …

Latinas In The Legal Academy: Progress And Promise, Raquel E. Aldana, Emile Loza De Siles, Solangel Maldonado, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

The 2022 Inaugural Graciela Oliva ́rez Latinas in the Legal Academy (“GO LILA”) Workshop convened seventy-four outstanding and powerful Latina law professors and professional legal educators (collectively, “Latinas in the legal academy,” or “LILAs”) to document and celebrate our individual and collective journeys and to grow stronger together. In this essay, we, four of the Latina law professors who helped to co-found the GO LILA Workshop, share what we learned about and from each other. We invite other LILAs to join our community and share their stories and journeys. We hope that the data and lessons that we share can …

Centering Students’ Rhetorical Knowledge: The Community Of Inquiry As Formative Assessment, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

This essay describes an approach to peer review and classroom workshopping intended to develop a community of inquiry in the first-year law school classroom, center students’ own rhetorical knowledge, and establish the authority of students—especially minoritized students—as rhetorical agents. The technique described in this essay works from the presumption that each student who comes to law school comes with rich rhetorical experience. In other words, they have extensive experience constructing discourse suited to certain audiences and certain contexts. They use a variety of tools to construct such discourse, including linguistic registers (or styles) and rhetorical genres (such as the academic …

Reconceiving Argument Schemes As Descriptive And Practically Normative, Brian N. Larson, David Seth Morrison

Faculty Scholarship

We propose a revised definition of “argument scheme” that focuses on describing argumentative performances and normative assessments that occur within an argumentative context, the social context in which the scheme arises. Our premise-and-conclusion structure identifies the typical instantiation of an argument in the argumentative context, and our critical framework describes a set of normative assessments available to participants in the context, what we call practically normative assessments. We distinguish this practical normativity from the rationally or universally normative assessment that might be imposed from outside the argumentative context. Thus, the practical norms represented in an argument scheme may still be …

Ethical Quagmires For Government Lawyers: Lessons For Legal Education, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

Each presidential administration faces its own challenges related to the ethics of government officials and lawyers. What distinguished the Trump presidency was the steady stream of news reports that related to controversies involving government lawyers. In examining various controversies, this Essay argues that the ethical standards applicable to government lawyers are often thorny and debatable. Fortney discusses how controversies involving alleged misconduct by government lawyers reveal the range and complexity of ethical dilemmas that government lawyers encounter. This Essay asserts that legal educators should do more to empower government lawyers to deal with such ethics issues. To highlight key ethics …

Protecting The Guild Or Protecting The Public? Bar Exams And The Diploma Privilege, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The bar examination has long loomed over legal education. Although many states formerly admitted law school graduates into legal practice via the diploma privilege, Wisconsin is the only state that recognizes the privilege today. The bar examination is so central to the attorney admissions process that all but a handful of jurisdictions required it amidst a pandemic that turned bar exam administration into a life-or-death matter.

This Article analyzes the diploma privilege from a historical and empirical perspective. Whereas courts and regulators maintain that bar examinations screen out incompetent practitioners, the legal profession formerly placed little emphasis on bar examinations …

Infusing Leadership Competencies Into 1l Professional Identity Formation, Aric Short

Faculty Scholarship

Law schools across the country are beginning to address the growing need to incorporate leadership training into their curricula; however, very few explicitly cover leadership in the 1L year. This article argues for the value of providing leadership training to 1Ls as part of a required course on professional identity formation. Because foundational leadership concepts overlap in meaningful ways with core lawyering competencies, such integration is both practical and efficient. Beginning leadership in the 1L year allows law schools to build on that foundational material in later clinics, externships, upper-level classes, and other experiences, creating deeper leadership skills in their …

Teaching And Assessing Active Listening As A Foundational Skill For Lawyers As Leaders, Counselors, Negotiators, And Advocates, Lindsey P. Gustafson, Aric Short, Neil W. Hamilton

Faculty Scholarship

Our students will be more effective leaders, counselors, negotiators, and advocates as they deepen their ability to actively listen. As a professional and interpersonal skill linked closely with a lawyer’s success, our students’ ability to listen should demand our attention as legal educators. This attention is worth the effort because studies indicate active listening is not a static ability: we can teach students to be better listeners. But “active listening” is missing from most law schools’ learning outcomes or curricula, or it is only included as an undefined element of effective communication. Consequently, it is a critical lawyering skill that …

From Pandemic To Pedagogy: Teaching The Technology Of Lawyering In Law Clinics, Sarah R. Boonin, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the nation’s approach to work and learning. Law schools, law firms, courts, and administrative agencies abruptly closed their offices and quickly reimagined how to perform their daily functions remotely. Many of these institutions have plans to maintain aspects of remote operations and services post-pandemic. With this in mind, the authors of this Article conducted a survey of law school clinical faculty during the winter of 2021 to better understand how clinicians pivoted their instruction and practice using technology during the pandemic. The authors use the survey results to show how the COVID-19 experience positions clinical …

Evaluating Legal Needs, Luz E. Herrera, Amber Baylor, Nandita Chaudhuri, Felipe Hinojosa

Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to explore legal needs in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas––a region that is predominantly Latinx and has both rural and urban characteristics. There are few legal needs assessments of majority Latinx communities, and none that examine needs in areas that are also U.S. border communities. Access to justice studies often overlook this area of the U.S. and this segment of the population despite their unique qualities. Latinos are projected to constitute the largest ethnic group in the country by 2060, making it imperative that we study access to justice-related assets, needs, opportunities, and barriers …

Review: The Dialogical Roots Of Deduction: Historical, Cognitive, And Philosophical Perspectives On Reasoning, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

The balance of this review addresses matters in the book that should be of particular interest to readers in the legal rhetoric and communication community. First, it addresses some concepts central to Dutilh Novaes’ effort. Second, it surveys the book’s organization, identifying some key observations and conclusions that she supports with careful evidence and argumentation. Third, it addresses Dutilh Novaes’ attention to non-European and non-Western research and logical traditions. Finally, it considers some difficult and technical passages, noting those readers should work through because the payoff is worth it and others I believe readers in our field might skip.

Law Review And Finding A Place In The Academy, Jenny E. Carroll

Faculty Scholarship

Membership on the Texas Law Review created opportunities for me, taught me a lot about editorial processes, and served as a reminder that I was a law outsider. The last of these is the focus for this essay, not because it is the most important or because it stands alone (it doesn’t), but because I believe there are other rooms in which to reminisce fondly about law review. Here, I want to speak more honestly about my experience because that experience, as an outsider, has influenced me most as a scholar, teacher, and advocate.

Getting Comfortable With Discomfort, Diversity & Repair, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The topic of this year's conference, diversity, pluralism, and repair, gives us so much to talk about, that for me, it was hard to know where we were to begin. Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig focused on judicial appointments and the importance of a diverse bench for the legal profession, and in our society. She also discussed becoming comfortable with discomfort and I wanted to pick up on that thread. When I think about discomfort, I think about my own journey in the legal profession.

Introduction: Lenses, Methods, And Approaches In Intellectual Property Research, Irene Calboli, Maria Lillà Montagnani

Faculty Scholarship

The relevance of Intellectual Property (IP) Law in our society has increased dramatically over the last several years. Globalization, digitization, and the rise of post-industrial information-based industries have all contributed to a new prominence of IP Law as one of the most important factors in driving innovation and economic development. At the same time, the significant expansion of IP rules has impacted many areas of public policy such as public health, the environment, biodiversity, agriculture, and information, in an unprecedented manner. No longer relegated to a cohort of few specialized experts, IP Law is now at the front and centre …

Precedent As Rational Persuasion, Brian N. Larson

Faculty Scholarship

The ways that judges and lawyers make and justify their arguments and decisions have profound impacts on our lives. Understanding those practices in light of theories of reasoning and argumentation is thus critical for understanding law and the society it shapes. An inquiry that explores the very foundations of all legal reasoning leads to a broad, important question: How do lawyers and judges use cited cases in their legal arguments? It turns out there is practically no empirical research to suggest the answer. As the first step in a comprehensive empirical effort to answer this question, this article performs a …

The Emerging Legal Architecture For Social Justice, Luz E. Herrera, Louise G. Trubek

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers advocating for social change are now front and center in newspapers and social media. This article discusses how a new breed of progressive lawyers envision social justice law practice today. These “critical lawyers” are diverse in background, gender, ethnicity and race. They see law as a complex, contradictory tool rather than a necessary and sufficient route to justice. Their practices differ from the traditional non-profit public interest firms of the earlier generation that assumed justice would result if law and lawyers were accessible. To highlight the differences, the article discusses the law practices of Beyond Legal Aid, Law for …

The Law Professor Pipeline, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

Throughout U.S. legal education’s history, a small number of elite law schools have produced the vast majority of law professors. Although law professor hiring is now more inclusive in certain respects, the law school an aspiring professor attended continues to serve as a powerful predictor of hiring market success. Some scholars have maintained that this preference for graduates of elite law schools infects legal education with class bias and distorts legal pedagogy, but the absence of reliable data on socioeconomic diversity within law schools has muted these criticisms.

This Essay reorients the debate on law school hiring by focusing on …

Access To Law Or Access To Lawyers? Master's Programs In The Public Educational Mission Of Law Schools, Mark Burge

Faculty Scholarship

The general decline in juris doctor (“J.D.”) law school applicants and enrollment over the last decade has coincided with the rise of a new breed of law degree. Whether known as a master of jurisprudence, juris master, master of legal studies, or other names, these graduate degrees all have a target audience in common: adult professionals who neither are nor seek to become practicing attorneys. Inside legal academia and among the practicing bar, these degrees have been accompanied by expressed concerns that they detract from the traditional core public mission of law schools—educating lawyers. This Article argues that non-lawyer master’s …

The Three Ages Of Modern American Lawyering And The Current Crisis In The Legal Profession And Legal Education, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

During the first months of 2018, two short pieces on legal education were published. One reported on the results of a survey of college graduates, law school graduates, and holders of other advanced degrees. The study found that today’s law graduates were less likely than pre-recession counterparts to report that the J.D. degree was worth the cost and more likely to have second thoughts about the decision to go to law school. The findings prompted Aaron Taylor, executive director of the Access Lex Center for Legal Education Excellence, to conclude that there are “two distinct worlds of law graduates” made …

Developing Workplace Law Programming: A Labor Of Love, Michael Z. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Professor Green reflects and comments on his work in developing workplace law programming as a key component of the annual SEALS program.

Case Law, Adam N. Steinman

Faculty Scholarship

Although case law plays a crucial role in the American legal system, surprisingly little consensus exists on how to determine the “law” that any given “case” generates. Lawyers, judges, and scholars regularly note the difference between holdings and dicta and between necessary and unnecessary parts of a precedent-setting decision, but such concepts have eluded coherent application in practice. There remains considerable uncertainty about which aspects of a judicial decision impose prospective legal obligations as a matter of stare decisis and to what extent.

This Article develops a counterintuitive, but productive, way to conceptualize case law: the lawmaking content of a …

Institutional Triage: Reflections On Being Acquired, Aric K. Short

Faculty Scholarship

On June 25, 2012, I walked into the dean's office at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He and I had been summoned by our university president to a hastily called meeting to discuss the law school's "academic program." Since I helped oversee our academic program as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the time, I was not particularly looking forward to the meeting. I assumed there would be bad news of some sort.

Instead, we were told that Texas Wesleyan University ("TWU") and Texas A&M University ("TAMU") were in negotiations that, it was expected, would result in a "strategic …

Incubating Community Law Practices: Post-Graduate Models For Lawyer Training & Access To Law, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

While the greatest number of lawyers practice in solo and small firms, law schools do not devote sufficient resources to preparing law students for the opportunities and challenges that these types of law firms present. The recent economic recession has highlighted the need to better train lawyers to launch law practices right out of law school. However, experienced lawyers, law professors and state bar policy makers worry that individuals who start their own practices are not sufficiently trained to practice and could irreparably harm a client. Many new lawyers share that concern but also worry about the financial instability that …

Teaching Remedial Problem-Solving Skills To A Law School's Underperforming Students, John F. Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

This article describes a course called the "Art of Lawyering" developed by the Texas A&M University School of Law to help the bottom quarter of the 2L class develop the critical-thinking and problem-solving skills they should have learned in their first year of law school. Students in the bottom quarter of the class at the beginning of their 2L year are most at risk for failing the bar exam after graduation. The Art of Lawyering gives these students the structural framework necessary to solve problems like a lawyer, improve their performance in law school, and pass the bar exam.

The …

Launching The Los Angeles Incubator Consortium, Laura Dym Cohen, Luz E. Herrera, William T. Tanner

Faculty Scholarship

This Article offers a snapshot of the initial two-month development process of a new law firm incubator program-the Los Angeles Incubator Consortium (LAIC). LAIC is a collaborative project of Pepperdine University School of Law, Southwestern Law School, and UCLA School of Law that was launched in collaboration with the Los Angeles Law Library and various local legal aid providers through seed funding from the California Commission on Access to Justice.14 Part II discusses the leadership role of California's Commission on Access to Justice in promoting incubators as models to increase the availability of affordable legal services for the modest-means population. …

Angela Harris: The Person, The Teacher, The Scholar, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Angela Harris has written eloquently about the creative tensions that define her as a person, a teacher, and a scholar. She has explored the challenges of maintaining a private identity when called upon to share her life experience with a public audience, whether in the classroom, at a conference, or in an essay. She has reflected on the ways in which legal teaching privileges reason over emotion, wondering whether this dynamic impoverishes the exchange of ideas and undervalues the joy that can motivate a caring advocate. And, she has explored the dialectic between identity politics and the structural forces that …

Encouraging The Development Of Low Bono Law Practices, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

For decades, the discussion about access to justice has primarily focused on the ability of low–income individuals to obtain free representation by lawyers. Lawyer representation is the “gold star” of the legal profession and advocates of legal services for the poor have fought difficult battles to ensure the most disadvantaged in our country have access to these professionals. As a result, legal aid programs and pro bono services that assist the most economically disadvantaged in our country are now common in our legal service delivery system.

Despite those important efforts, only 50% of those eligible for free legal services actually …

Educating Main Street Lawyers, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

Discussion about the value of a law degree has focused on the financial success of lawyers. Both defenders and critics of the existing legal education model largely ignore the implications that the cost of legal education and high lawyer fees have on access to justice. While a lawyer’s ability to make a decent living must be addressed when determining the value of a legal education, we fail to take into account the fact that there are millions of individuals in the U.S. who cannot find a lawyer to represent them when they need one. For advocates who believe that our …

Clark Kerr And Me: The Future Of The Public Law School, Rachel F. Moran

Faculty Scholarship

Clark Kerr has long enjoyed an iconic status among leaders in public higher education. The former president of the University of California left a lasting impression on the academic world with his Godkin Lectures on the future of colleges and universities delivered at Harvard in 1963. He spoke at a moment when public higher education, and indeed higher education more generally, had been enjoying a renaissance of energy and vision. After World War II, veterans returned and reinvigorated the student body with the support of the GI Bill, and state legislatures generously funded public institutions to keep tuition low so …