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Full-Text Articles in Legal Profession
Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner
Oh, The Treatise!, Richard A. Danner
Michigan Law Review
In his foreword to the Michigan Law Review's 2009 Survey of Books Related to the Law, my former Duke colleague Erwin Chemerinsky posed the question: "[W]hy should law professors write?" In answering, Erwin took as a starting point the well-known criticisms of legal scholarship that Judge Harry Edwards published in this journal in 1992. Judge Edwards indicted legal scholars for failing to engage the practical problems facing lawyers and judges, writing instead for the benefit of scholars in law and other disciplines rather than for their professional audiences. He characterized "practical" legal scholarship as both prescriptive (aiming to instruct attorneys, …
The Disjunction Between Judge Edwards And Professor Priest, Louis H. Pollak
The Disjunction Between Judge Edwards And Professor Priest, Louis H. Pollak
Michigan Law Review
With characteristic vigor, Judge Harry Edwards, in his essay The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education and the Legal Profession, has censured the law schools and, secondarily, the bar, for what he sees as profoundly disturbing trends pulling academics and practitioners farther and farther apart. Judge Edwards' censure is not proffered off the cuff. He has carefully polled his former law clerks on their perceptions of their law school years and of their postclerkship professional experiences - whether in private practice, in government, or in teaching. In the text and footnotes of his essay, Judge Edwards quotes his law clerks' …
The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession: A Postscript, Harry T. Edwards
The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession: A Postscript, Harry T. Edwards
Michigan Law Review
In this essay I offer a postscript to "The Growing Disjunction." It is not possible for me to "respond" directly to the other participants in this symposium, because I had no opportunity before publication to read what they have written. I will therefore limit myself to two tasks. First, I will briefly discuss several issues raised in the article. Second, and most important, I wish to share a representative sample of the responses I have received regarding the article. These responses, I think, provide good evidence of the magnitude of the problem that we face.
Clerks In The Maze, Pierre Schlag
Clerks In The Maze, Pierre Schlag
Michigan Law Review
It must be very difficult to be a judge - particularly an appellate judge. Not only must appellate judges reconcile often incommensurable visions of what law is, what it commands, or what it strives to achieve, but judges must do this largely alone. What little help they have in terms of actual human contact, apart from their clerks, typically takes the form of two or more advocates whose entire raison d'être is to persuade, coax, and manipulate the judge into reaching a predetermined outcome - one which often instantiates or exemplifies only the most tenuous positive connection to the rhetoric …
The Deprofessionalization Of Legal Teaching And Scholarship, Richard A. Posner
The Deprofessionalization Of Legal Teaching And Scholarship, Richard A. Posner
Michigan Law Review
The editors have asked me to comment on Judge Edwards' double-barreled blast at legal education and the practice of law. This I am happy to do. It is an important article, stating with refreshing bluntness concerns that are widely felt but have never I think been so forcefully, so arrestingly expressed. Nevertheless I have deep disagreements with it.
Students As Teachers, Teachers As Learners, Derrick Bell, Erin Edmonds
Students As Teachers, Teachers As Learners, Derrick Bell, Erin Edmonds
Michigan Law Review
Judge Edwards divides his analysis of the cause of the crisis in ethical lawyering into an overview and three parts. The overview and first two parts deal mainly with the role of law schools and legal curriculum in what he views as the deterioration of responsible, capable practitioners. This article takes issue with some of the assumptions, analyses, and conclusions those sections contain. The third part of Edwards' article analyzes the role of law firms in causing that same deterioration. This article agrees with and will elaborate upon that part of Edwards' treatment.
We approach Judge Edwards' article, we hope, …
Pro Bono Legal Work: For The Good Of Not Only The Public, But Also The Lawyer And The Legal Profession, Nadine Strossen
Pro Bono Legal Work: For The Good Of Not Only The Public, But Also The Lawyer And The Legal Profession, Nadine Strossen
Michigan Law Review
I agree with Judge Edwards that "the lawyer has an ethical obligation to practice public interest law - to represent some poor clients; to advance some causes that he or she believes to be just." I also concur in Judge Edwards' opinion that "[a] person who deploys his or her doctrinal skill without concern for the public interest is merely a good legal technician - not a good lawyer."
Rather than further develop Judge Edwards' theme that lawyers have a professional responsibility to do pro bono work, I will offer another rationale for such work, grounded in professional and individual …
Stewardship, Donald B. Ayer
Stewardship, Donald B. Ayer
Michigan Law Review
While I agree with much that Judge Edwards has proposed, I thus submit that his formulations of the problem are partial - a bit like those of the blind men examining different parts of the elephant. The law's current unhappiness is only partly described as that of law schools and practicing lawyers going in different directions, of law practice becoming too commercial, or of law schools failing to serve the needs of the practicing lawyers and judges with practical teaching and scholarship. All of these observations, while correct as far as they go, miss the root of the problem, which …
Commentary On Judge Edwards' "Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession", James L. Oakes
Commentary On Judge Edwards' "Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession", James L. Oakes
Michigan Law Review
Perhaps this little piece should be entitled Grace Notes rather than Commentary because I agree with so much of what Judge Edwards had to say in the Michigan Law Review. When I first read his piece, I have to say I was quite skeptical of his methodology, namely, running a survey past a group of former law clerks who, by virtue of their own super achievement, primarily in so-called elite law schools, quite easily could have ethereal points of view. But in typical Edwardsian fashion, the judge made appropriate disclaimers, and the clerks' comments seemed to me, for the most …
Persuasion, Joseph William Singer
Persuasion, Joseph William Singer
Michigan Law Review
Lawyers spend a lot of time attempting to persuade other people. They persuade judges to promulgate rules of law that favor their clients. They persuade their law partners to adopt their interpretation of existing law or to adopt their strategy for litigation. They persuade clients to accept the dictates of the law. They persuade adversaries in settlement negotiations and their clients' business associates in contract negotiations. They persuade legislatures to fund legal services for the poor, to adopt or to reject law reforms.
Law professors spend most of their time teaching - or at least practicing - the art of …