Legal Profession Commons^™

The Federal Judicial Conduct And Disability System: Unfinished Business For Congress And For The Judiciary, Arthur D. Hellman

Testimony

For most of the nation’s history, the only formal mechanism for dealing with misconduct by federal judges was the cumbersome process of impeachment. That era ended with the enactment of the Judicial Councils Reform and Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980 (1980 Act or Act). In 2002, Congress made modest amendments to the Act and codified the provisions in Chapter 16 of Title 28. In 2008, the Judicial Conference of the United States – the administrative policy-making body of the federal judiciary – approved the first set of nationally binding rules for misconduct proceedings.

Under the 1980 Act and …

How Lawyers' Intuitions Prolong Litigation, Andrew J. Wistrich, Jeffrey J. Rachlinski

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Most lawsuits settle, but some settle later than they should. Too many compromises occur only after protracted discovery and expensive motion practice. Sometimes the delay precludes settlement altogether. Why does this happen? Several possibilities—such as the alleged greed of lawyers paid on an hourly basis—have been suggested, but they are insufficient to explain why so many cases do not settle until the eve of trial. We offer a novel account of the phenomenon of settling on the courthouse steps that is based upon empirical research concerning judgment and choice. Several cognitive illusions—the framing effect, the confirmation bias, nonconsequentialist reasoning, and …

Survey Of Illinois Law: Waiver Of The Attorney-Client Privilege And Work Product Protection, 37 S. Ill. U. L.J. 825 (2013), Ralph Ruebner, Katarina Durcova

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

Effective January 1, 2013, two new Illinois Supreme Court rules clarify and limit the waiver of the attorney-client privilege and work product protection rule. Illinois Rule of Evidence 502 ("IRE 502"), which spells out the limitations on waiver, is accompanied by a "clawback provision" in Illinois Supreme Court Rule 201(p) ("Rule 201(p)") that details the procedural steps a disclosing party should take to successfully assert the privilege following an inadvertent discovery disclosure. Additionally, these changes clarify the mandatory duty of the receiving party. IRE 502 was modeled on Federal Rule of Evidence 502 ("FRE 502") and Rule 201(p) was modeled …

Commentator’S Response To J. Goodwin 'Norms Of Advocacy', Camille Cameron

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Professor Goodwin makes a case for the normative complexity of advocacy. She makes this case in the contexts of courtroom advocacy and advocacy in the public relations industry. I am going to examine that conclusion by reference to one of her two chosen case studies – courtroom advocacy. I am also going to agree with her conclusion that courtroom advocacy is normatively complex, although I will part company with her on a few points.

Goodwin has argued that the activity of arguing in court is normatively structured, in the sense that it is more than just persuasion, it is certainly …

Achieving Procedural Goals Through Indirection: The Use Of Ethics Doctrine To Justify Contingency Fee Caps In Mdl Aggregate Settlements, Morris A. Ratner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

What Do Clients Want From Their Lawyers?, Clark D. Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

This working paper assembles empirical data from England, Australia and the United States indicating that individual clients do not evaluate their lawyers - as attorneys frequently assume - primarily in terms of the outcomes achieved. Rather, clients place greater weight on the quality of communication with their lawyers and are often disappointed by failure to listen carefully and explain clearly. The paper concludes with suggestive survey data that organizational clients may have similar views about the large firm lawyers that represent them. The author is the director of the Effective Lawyer-Client Communication Project and the National Institute for Teaching Ethics …

A Market For Justice: A First Empirical Look At Third Party Litigation Funding, David S. Abrams, Daniel L. Chen

All Faculty Scholarship

The alienability of legal claims holds the promise of increasing access to justice and fostering development of the law. While much theoretical work points to this possibility, no empirical work has investigated the claims, largely due to the rarity of trading in legal claims in modern systems of law. In this paper we take the first step toward empirically testing some of these theoretical claims using data from Australia. We find some evidence that third-party funding corresponds to an increase in litigation and court caseloads. Cases with third-party funders are more prominent than comparable ones. While third-party funding may have …

Judges! Stop Deferring To Class-Action Lawyers, Brian Wolfman

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The idea for this article came from the author's representation of a national non-profit consumer rights organization in a federal appeal challenging a district court’s approval of a class-action settlement. The organization's appellate briefs argued that the district court committed a reversible legal error when it deferred to the class-action lawyers’ recommendation to approve the settlement because, in those lawyers’ views, the settlement was "fair, reasonable, and adequate" (which is the standard for class-action settlement approval under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(e)). The district court also deferred to the lawyers' reputations as talented and honest lawyers.

In this article, …

Educating For The Future: Teaching Evidence In The Technological Age, Denise H. Wong

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The advent of the technological age has had significant effect on litigation practice, none more so than in the area of evidence gathering and presentation in court. A significant proportion of evidence that is gathered for both criminal and civil matters is now electronic in nature, and this necessitates a change in the way that lawyers think and advise on evidential issues. It is argued here that rather than simply focusing on principles relating to the admissibility of evidence in court, the traditional course on evidence law should be modified to equip students with an intellectual framework that conceives of …