Legal Profession Commons^™

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 …

Righting The Ship: What Courts Are Still Getting Wrong About Electronic Discovery, Tanya Pierce

Faculty Scholarship

What happens when law changes but courts and lawyers ignore the changes? On December 1, 2015, amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure went into effect. One of those amendments includes a sweeping change to Rule 37(e), dealing with the availability of sanctions in federal courts for lost or destroyed electronically stored information (ESI). In the last few years, however, a number of courts have interpreted the amended rule in ways at odds with its plain language and underlying policies, and a surprising number of courts continue to ignore the amended rule altogether. This article examines those trends and …

Simplified Courts Can't Solve Inequality, Colleen F. Shanahan, Anna E. Carpenter

Faculty Scholarship

State civil courts struggle to handle the volume of cases before them. Litigants in these courts, most of whom are unrepresented, struggle to navigate the courts to solve their problems. This access-to-justice crisis has led to a range of reform efforts and solutions. One type of reform, court simplification, strives to reduce the complexity of procedures and information used by courts to help unrepresented litigants navigate the judicial system. These reforms mitigate but do not solve the symptoms of the larger underlying problem: state civil courts are struggling because they have been stuck with legal cases that arise from the …

Adr And Access To Justice: Current Perspectives, Rory Van Loo, Ellen E. Deason, Michael Z. Green, Donna Shestowsky, Ellen Waldman

Faculty Scholarship

Access to justice is a broad topic, and we cannot cover everything. You will notice a few major omissions. Most notably, we are not going to emphasize consumer pre-dispute arbitration agreements. This is not because they are not important, but because much has been written and said on this topic, and it could easily swallow the whole discussion. Also, we are probably not going to say very much about restorative justice, and I am sure you will notice some other holes. We invite you to raise missing issues in your comments.

Let me start with a few opening remarks. We …

Class Counsel As Litigation Funders, Morris A. Ratner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

When The Lawyer Screws Up: A Portrait Of Legal Malpractice Claims And Their Resolution, Herbert M. Kritzer, Neil Vidmar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Profit For Costs, Morris A. Ratner, William B. Rubenstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

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.

Rollen Und Rollenverständnisse Im Transnationalen Privatrecht [Roles And Role Perceptions In Transnational Private Law], Ralf Michaels

Faculty Scholarship

Downloadable Document is in German

Summary

1. The private lawyer’s role is inseparably connected with the paradigms and doctrines of private law. This is so because the role played by private lawyers constitutes a large part of their understanding of the discipline. At the same time, the shared understanding of the discipline has necessary consequences for the roles played by lawyers in it.

2. Roles and role perceptions in private law are contingent upon space and time. The most important factor affecting private lawyers today is the growing detachment of private law from the state, through globalization, Europeanization, and privatization …

The Impact Of Science On Legal Decisions: What Can Social Science Tell The Courts And Lawyers?, Theresa M. Beiner

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Supreme Court, 1991 Term - Leading Cases, Ernest A. Young

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Voices Heard In Jury Argument: Litigation And The Law School Curriculum, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Devolution Of The Legal Profession: A Demand Side Perspective, Ronald J. Gilson

Faculty Scholarship

Economic analysis has not played a significant role in the increasingly intense debate over the decline of professionalism among lawyers.Economists' lack of interest in the issue may be understandable. The lawyers' lament is that the legal profession is devolving into the business of law. That this concern has not captured the economists' attention may reflect only that economists do not view the label "business" as a pejorative. If becoming a business means efficiently rendering an important service in a competitive environment, then of what is there to complain?

Lawyers, more directly concerned with maintaining their professional status, would find little …