Legal Profession Commons^™

Free-Ing Criminal Justice, I. Bennett Capers

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Being Good Lawyers: A Relational Approach To Law Practice, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

In response to past generations of debates regarding whether law is a business or profession, we advance an alternative approach that rejects the dichotomies of business and profession, or hired gun and wise counselor. Instead, we propose a relational account of law practice. Unlike frameworks grounded in assumptions of atomistic individualism or communitarianism, a relational perspective recognizes that all actors, whether individuals or organizations, have separate identities yet are intrinsically inter-connected and cannot maximize their own good in isolation. Through the lens of relational self-interest, maximizing the good of the individual or business requires consideration of the good of the …

Toward A Writing-Centered Legal Education, Adam Lamparello

Res Gestae

The future of legal education—and experiential learning—should be grounded in a curriculum that requires students to take writing courses throughout law school. Additionally, the curriculum should be one that collapses the distinction between doctrinal, legal writing, and clinical faculty, as well as merges analytical, practical, and clinical instruction into a real world curriculum.

The justification for a writing-intensive program of legal education is driven by the reality that persuasive writing ability is among the most important skills a lawyer must possess and a skill that many lawyers and judges claim graduates lack. Part of the problem is that law schools …

Learning And Lawyering Across Personality Types, Ian Weinstein

Faculty Scholarship

Personality theory illuminates recurring problems in law school teaching. While the roots of modern personality theory extend back to Hippocrates and the theory of the four humors, contemporary ideas owe much to Carl Jung's magisterial book, Psychological Types. Jung's work gave us the categories of introvert and extrovert, as it explored what has come to be understood as the cognitive bases for our habits of mind. These are powerful ideas but also complex and sometimes obscure. Applying them to law school teaching and learning (and law practice) can be very fruitful, if we pay careful attention to ourselves and colleagues, …

Volunteerism And Transition, John D. Feerick, Jessica Thaler

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Lawyers’ Professional Independence: Overrated Or Undervalued?, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the concept of lawyers’ "professional independence" in the literature of the U.S. legal profession. It begins with some reflections on the conventional meanings of professional independence, which encompasses both the bar’s collective independence to regulate its members and individual lawyers’ independence in the context of professional representations, including independence from clients, on one hand, and independence from third parties, on the other. The article suggests that the professional conduct rules are overly preoccupied with protecting lawyers’ professional independence from the corrupting influences of other professionals. The article then turns to an aspect of professional independence that has …

Unregulated Corporate Internal Investigations: Achieving Fairness For Corporate Constituents, Bruce A. Green, Ellen S. Progdor

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on the relationship between corporations and their employee constituents in the context of corporate internal investigations, an unregulated multi-million dollar business. The classic approach provided in the 1981 Supreme Court opinion, Upjohn v. United States, is contrasted with the reality of modern-day internal investigations that may exploit individuals to achieve a corporate benefit with the government. Attorney-client privilege becomes an issue as corporate constituents perceive that corporate counsel is representing their interests, when in fact these internal investigators are obtaining information for the corporation to barter with the government. Legal precedent and ethics rules provide little relief …

The Relational Infrastructure Of Law Firm Culture And Regulation: The Exaggerated Death Of Big Law, Russell G. Pearce, Eli Wald

Faculty Scholarship

In recent years, the ethical infrastructure and culture of law firms has come under attack from commentators, such as Larry Ribstein, Bill Henderson, and Marc Galanter, who, in related ways, predict "the death of Big Law." They assert that the individualistic ethical infrastructure and culture of large firms undermine their commitment to professional values and will result in their failure to prepare for, and to survive, long term economic and technological trends. We identify a contradiction at the heart of this analysis. While these critiques correctly identify the individualistic flaws of law firm culture, they share the same individualistic assumptions. …

Towards Engaged Scholarship, Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Making Good Lawyers, Eli Wald, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Today, the criticism of law schools has become an industry. Detractors argue that legal education fails to effectively prepare students for the practice of law, that it is too theoretical and detached from the profession, that it dehumanizes and alienates students, too expensive and inapt in helping students develop a sense of professional identity, professional values, and professionalism. In this sea of criticisms it is hard to see the forest from the trees. “There is so much wrong with legal education today,” writes one commentator, “that it is hard to know where to begin.” This article argues that any reform …

Prosecutors And Professional Regulation, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

Prosecutors often express mistrust of professional regulators, their rules and their processes. This may have been more understandable twenty years ago, when prosecutors perceived that the organized bar had been captured by defense lawyers seeking to use professional regulation as a means of imposing limits on criminal investigative authority that the law did not otherwise recognize. Although that criticism no longer has much basis in reality, it has persisted in the rhetoric prosecutors employ in advocacy regarding their professional conduct. This article explores prosecutors’ public attitude toward professional regulation, beginning with a brief account of their responses two decades ago, …

The Virtue Of Low Barriers To Becoming A Lawyer: Promoting Liberal And Democratic Values [With Sinna Nasseri], Russell G. Pearce, Sinna Nasseri

Faculty Scholarship

This article offers a new perspective on how to determine whether barriers to practicing law are appropriate. It identifies a connection between those barriers and the role of legal services providers (‘lawyers’) in permitting individuals to obtain their basic political and economic rights in a liberal democracy. Democratic values require making legal services as equally available as possible to all citizens, while liberal values dictate that each individual has access in order to enforce human rights, compete in a market economy, and engage in a legal system grounded in the rule of law. Liberal and democratic values therefore require the …

The Flood Of U.S. Lawyers: Natural Fluctuation Or Professional Climate Change?, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

This paper considers how US courts, which regulate the US legal profession, should respond to the perceived excess of lawyers (i.e. to the lack of adequate employment opportunities for lawyers). It begins by summarizing the courts’ regulatory role. It then situates the contemporary flood-of-lawyers problem in the unavailability of well-paid legal work, not in the absence of a need for lawyers’ services: many people need lawyers, but they cannot afford them. Next, the paper explores whether the problem is simply a product of natural economic fluctuation which will be solved naturally, particularly if potential law school applicants become better informed, …

Confidentiality Explained: The Dialogue Approach To Discussing Confidentiality With Clients, Elisia M. Klinka, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Many lawyers lie to their clients by saying, “Everything you tell me is confidential” despite the existence of some rules that require lawyers to disclose client confidences and others that permit lawyers to disclose confidences to protect themselves or collect fees. In an effort to encourage clients to speak honestly, a number of commentators urge lawyers to provide either a general or specific notice of the exceptions to confidentiality. This Article offers a different approach. It seeks to promote an honest and open dialogue between lawyer and client that will create a relationship of mutual trust and will make it …

Lawyering In A Vacuum, James A. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Values And Value Creation In Public-Private Transactions , Nestor M. Davidson

Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have developed a significant body of literature exploring the work of deal lawyers with the essential insight that attorneys acting as transaction-cost engineers have unique potential to add to the overall value of deals. This value-creation literature has traditionally made two foundational assumptions about the role of the state in transactional law. First, scholars have assumed that regulation is essentially irrelevant to transacting-that from the deal lawyer's perspective, the government is a factor only to the extent that the state will enforce private agreements. Second, scholars have assumed that private parties uniformly view public policy as a constraint in …

The Market For Bad Legal Scholarship: William H. Simon's Experiment In Professional Regulation, The, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

William H. Simon is a highly regarded law professor and legal theorist whose principal subjects include the legal profession. Much of his scholarship challenges conventional professional norms and practices. His most recent article targets lawyers, especially law professors, who advise clients and serve as expert witnesses. His basic premise is that some clients do not seek lawyers' accurate, honest views but want their lawyers to ratify their proposed or past conduct regardless of its lawfulness, and that law professors and other lawyers sometimes satisfy this market by giving "bad legal advice." To discourage lawyers from doing so, and to minimize …

Sleight Of Hand, Benjamin C. Zipursky

Faculty Scholarship

Thanks to Richard Posner's classic 1972 article, A Theory of Negligence Law, the Hand formula of United States. v. Carroll Towing Co. is perhaps the most central idea of many first-year torts classes today. Students learn that the meaning of negligence should be understood in terms of Judge Learned Hand's formula comparing the costs of taking precautions with the product of the likelihood of injury without those precautions and the magnitude of such injury. There is more than a little irony, however, in the superstar status of the Hand formula in negligence law. Carroll Towing is not a negligence case …

Religious Lawyering's Second Wave, Russell G. Pearce, Amelia J. Uelmen

Faculty Scholarship

Since the mid-1990s, the "religious lawyering movement" has expanded dramatically, receiving greater attention within the academy and the bar. As the movement enters what we term its "second wave" of development, this essay begins with a look back to its "first wave" of path-breaking scholarship and its gradual shift toward more institutionalized structures and programs. It argues that the predominant characteristic of first-wave religious lawyering scholarship was to claim a space within the professional conversation for lawyers to bring religious values to bear on their work. The essay then predicts that in the second wave religious lawyering conversations and scholarship …

Religious Lawyering In A Liberal Democracy: A Challenge And An Invitation William A. Brahms Lecture On Law & Religion, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

At a time when many believe that law is no longer a noble profession, many lawyers see no reason to devote time and energy to promoting the public good. Religious lawyering may offer a powerful antidote: a robust framework for lawyers to integrate into their professional lives their most deeply rooted values, perspectives and critiques, and persuasive reasons to improve the quality of justice and work for the common good. At its best, religious lawyering echoes Martin Luther King's advice to the street sweeper. How wonderful it would be, indeed, if we practiced law so well that the host of …

Legal Ethics Must Be The Heart Of The Law School Curriculum Symposium: Recommitting To Teaching Legal Ethics- Shaping Our Teaching In A Changing World, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Despite what seems to be far greater attention paid to the teaching of legal ethics than to any other law school subject, legal ethics remains no better than a second class subject in the eyes of students and faculty. This essay suggests that all efforts at innovation in legal ethics teaching are doomed to a marginal impact at best. Only recognition that legal ethics is the most important subject in the law school curriculum will lead to real and significant changes in the teaching of legal ethics. If the commitment of the legal profession and of legal academia to producing …

Maccrate's Missed Opportunity: The Maccrate Report's Failure To Advance Professional Values Symposium, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The 1992 Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap (the "Task Force"), Legal Education Professional Development - An Educational Continuum, popularly known as the MacCrate Report (the "Report"), was the most ambitious effort to reform legal education in the past generation. Some commentators have described the Report as "the greatest proposed paradigm shift in legal education since Langdell envisioned legal education as the pursuit of legal science through the case method in the late 19th century.” Although the Report sought to promote education in both lawyering skills and values, its major influence has …

Lawyers, Non-Lawyers And Mediation: Rethinking The Professional Monopoly From A Problem-Solving Perspective , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation is a big business today that is practiced by lawyers and non-lawyers, and is closely related to the business of law. Lawyers have a long-standing monopoly on the law business and do not look favorably on sharing their power with nonlawyers. This phenomenon is odd because it occurs at the same time that the legal profession is beginning to embrace a new ethic of problem-solving that honors the values of collaboration and power-sharing among professionals in multiple disciplines. Lawyers protect their professional monopoly through the unauthorized practice of law ("UPL") doctrine that limits the practice of law to licensed …

Lawyer And Public Service, The Historical Perspectives On Pro Bono Lawyering, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Historically, the first way of viewing the lawyer's role was as a member of America's governing class. Second came cause lawyering on behalf of a particular issue. Third, and most recently, arose the idea of pro bono lawyering, a less ambitious incarnation of the governing class lawyer who contributes time to helping cause lawyers. These categories are not rigid: for each individual they may overlap to one degree or another. This framework is preliminary and requires further research and development. Nonetheless, it provides a useful tool for explaining how lawyers-and in particular the heroic lawyers described in this symposium-connect to …

Faith And The Lawyer's Practice Symposium: Law Religion And The Public Good, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

If there is a religious way to read, is there a religious way to be a lawyer? More and more lawyers, judges and scholars are answering yes to that question. We heard earlier from Cardinal Bevilacqua about the history of the Religious Lawyering Movement, which blossomed in the 1990s. There was writing about the law and religion before that time." We can date religious lawyering as a body of work in mainstream legal literature, as Cardinal Bevilacqua did, to the work of Professor Thomas Shaffer in the 1980s.Why did this movement take off in the 1990s? Again, what accounts for …

Thoughts About Corporate Lawyers After Reading The Cigarette Papers: Has The "Wise Counselor" Given Way To The "Hired Gun"?", Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Reflections On The Ethics Of Legal Academics: Law Schools As Mdps; Or, Should Law Professors Practice What They Teach Symposium: Ethics Of Law Professors, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

[A member of the House of Commons said in Samuel Johnson's presence] that he paid no regard to the arguments of counsel at the bar of the House of Commons, because they were paid for speaking. JOHNSON. 'Nay, Sir, argument is argument. You cannot help paying regard to their arguments, if they are good, If it were testimony, you might disregard it, if you knew that it were purchased. There is a beautiful image in Bacon upon this subject: testimony is like an arrow shot from a long bow; the force of it depends on the hand that draws it. …

Public Declarations Of Professionalism Professionalism Symposium, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

When it comes to the subject of "professionalism," there is a gap between the leaders of the organized bar and its members. Bar leaders are eager to discuss the subject. For example, this year's annual meeting of the American Bar Association ("ABA") afforded bar leaders, as well as legal academics, a host of opportunities to share strategies to promote "professionalism" and "professional values." The Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar sponsored a program on "Professionalism in Law Schools and the Profession." Organizations representing bar executives, bar presidents, and bar foundations jointly presented a program called "Tough Talk, …

Legal Practice Rights Of Domestic And Foreign Lawyers In The United States , Roger J. Goebel

Faculty Scholarship

In the post-World War II international economy, with its enormous growth in transnational trade and investment, multinational legal practice has become a functional reality. Within the last two decades, the volume of trans-border legal practice has grown enormously in fields such as trade law, international banking and finance, international arbitration and litigation, international contractual and joint venture arrangements, transborder acquisitions and mergers, international antitrust, inter- national tax planning, and foreign investment counselling. Domestic law firms within the leading commercial nations have not only grown substantially in size, often by merger, they have also increasingly created networks of foreign branch offices, …

Cautionary Tale From The Multidisciplinary Practice Debate: How The Traditionalists Lost Professionalism, A The Phyllis W. Beck Chair In Law Symposium: New Roles, No Rules - Redefining Lawyers' Work - Redefining Lawyers' Work: Multidisciplinary Practice, Russell G. Pearce, Amelia J. Uelmen:

Faculty Scholarship

The author presents a fictional conversation among Lawrence J. Fox, other noted legal scholars, and himself concerning the ethics and changes in the legal profession.