Legal Profession Commons^™

Popular Culture's Portrayal Of Attorney Decision-Making And It's Consequences- An Analysis Of An Attorney's Internal Ethical Conflict In Film, Tara M. Parente

Tara M. Parente

This paper explores how popular culture portrays attorney decision-making and its consequences. This paper compares and contrasts two films in order to exemplify how attorneys are portrayed throughout film and how this carries over into real life. Attorneys are faced with ethical dilemmas at all times, especially throughout career advancement and the decisions made tend to affect every aspect of an attorney's life.

You've Got Rhythm: Curriculum Planning And Teaching Rhythm At Work In The Legal Writing Classroom, Debra Moss Curtis

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Fostering A Respect For Our Students, Our Specialty, And The Legal Profession: Introducing Ethics And Professionalism Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Melissa H. Weresh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Increased Importance Of Legal Writing In The Era Of “The Vanishing Trial”, Edward D. Re

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Choosing The Top Candidate: Best Practices In Academic Law Library Hiring, Ronald Wheeler, Nancy Johnson, Terrance Manion

Terrance K Manion

The authors discuss successful hiring practices in academic law libraries. Their discussion details each step of the hiring process, from vacancy to offer, and explores strategies for implementing the steps successfully. The processes examined include: reviewing the vacancy, assessing the library needs, forming an effective search committee, writing a winning job description, checking references, conducting an interview, and making an offer. The authors assert that a successful hire will influence every aspect of your library and, as such, a library needs to devote considerable attention and resources to librarian searches.

Unleashing The Leader In You: Our Aall Leadership Academy Experience, Meg Butler, Trina Holloway

Trina Holloway

No abstract provided.

For Law Review Citations, Are All Citators Created Equal? A Comparison Of Four Citators, Pamela C. Brannon

Pamela Brannon

No abstract provided.

One Hundred Nos: An Empirical Analysis Of The First 100 Denials Of Institution For Inter Partes And Covered Business Method Patent Reviews, Jonathan R. K. Stroud, Jarrad Wood

Jonathan R. K. Stroud

Tasked in 2011 with creating three powerful new patent review trial regimes, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—through the efforts of their freshly empowered quasi-judicial body, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board—set to creating a fast-paced trial with minimal discovery and maximum efficiency. In the first two years of existence, the proceedings have proved potent, holding unpatentable many of the claims that reach decisions on the merits. Yet a small subsection of petitions never make it past the starting gate, resulting in wasted time and effort on the parts of petitioners—and likely sighs of relief from the rights-holders. Parties on …

Experiential Legal Writing: The New Approach To Practicing Like A Lawyer, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Law students engage in various types of “experiential” learning activities while in school, such as clinics and externships, but they graduate without the experience necessary to practice law. This is traceable to a glaring deficiency at most law schools: a writing program that is comprehensive, properly sequenced, and integrated across and throughout the law school curriculum.

First, most graduates have never drafted the documents they will encounter in law practice. Additionally, they have not drafted and re-drafted such documents while also participating in real-world simulations as they would in actual practice. Instead, students graduate having drafted an appellate brief, a …

Enigma: A Variation On The Theme Of Legal Writing's Place In Contemporary Legal Education, Ian Gallacher

Ian Gallacher

No abstract provided.

Whose Article Is It Anyway? Student Editors And The Law Review Process, Josephine R. Potuto

Josephine R Potuto

Law professors publish in law reviews, not peer-reviewed journals. They are edited by law students. The editing process can be both irritating and exasperating. From experiences lived and those shared by colleagues across the country, I provide concrete examples of where law student editors go wrong, and also explain why.

Building The Canon Of Utah Constitutional Law: Lessons From The Utah Public Interest Standing Doctrine, Jordan Dez

Utah Law Review

In the current era of Utah constitutional case law, the legal community will have to be creative—and even deviceful—to piece together compelling briefs to argue cases under the Utah Constitution. In contrast to the early days of New Judicial Federalism where the court introduced new interpretations into the Utah constitutional dialogue from nothing more than a party’s citation to sister state law, sophisticated briefing is now necessary to succeed on a Utah Constitutional claim. Even where there is little case law or unfavorable prior precedents, practitioners may still find success by raising arguments grounded in the text of the Utah …

A Proposal To The Aba: Integrating Legal Writing And Experiential Learning Into A Required, Six-Semester Curriculum That Trains Students In Core Competencies, 'Soft Skills,' And Real-World Judgment, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Experiential learning is not the answer to the problems facing legal education. Simulations, externships, and clinics are vital aspects of a real-world legal education, but they cannot alone produce competent graduates. The better approach is to create a required, six-semester experiential legal writing curriculum where students draft and re-draft the most common litigation documents and engage in simulations, including client interviews, mediation, depositions, settlement negotiations, and oral arguments in the order that they would in actual practice. In so doing, law schools can provide the time and context within which students can truly learn to think like lawyers, do what …

A Proposal To The Aba: One Required Legal Writing Course For All Six Semesters Of Law School, Adam Lamparello

Adam Lamparello

If you decide to run a marathon, but stop training after the eighth week of a sixteen-week training schedule, you will not finish. Why? Your muscles atrophied, and your stamina declined. If you stop writing after the second or third semester of law school, you will not become a good legal writer. Why? Your skills atrophied. You did not develop mental memory—just like the marathon runner did not develop muscle memory.

Why did the marathon runner stop? Maybe life got in the way, or training became too hard. But it’s the difficult moments—the grind—that separates the marathon runner from the …

Preface, Ken I. Kersch, Linda C. Mcclain

Faculty Scholarship

In an essay in the Texas Law Review not too long ago, Sandy Levinson lamented the degree to which law reviews—most prominently the Michigan Law Review—were sharply cutting down on the space they were devoting to book reviews.1 This was especially unfortunate as law professors were publishing more and more books. The publication of a book, as opposed to a journal article, was for many a deliberate choice involving an effort to address subjects at greater length, in greater depth, and on a broader scale for a wider scholarly (and perhaps educated popular) audience. Thematic review essays on books, whether …

Language Acculturation Processes And Resistance To In"Doctrine"Ation In The Legal Skills Curriculum And Beyond: A Commentary On Mertz's Critical Anthropology Of The Socratic, Doctrinal Classroom, 34 J. Marshall L. Rev. 131 (2000), Brook K. Baker

Brook K. Baker

No abstract provided.

Cat, Cause, And Kant, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

University of Massachusetts Law Review

These are precarious times in which to launch a new law school and a new law review. Yet here we are. The University of Massachusetts is now in its first year of operation with provisional ABA accreditation. This text is a foreword to the first general-interest issue of the University of Massachusetts Law Review. Now marks an appropriate time to take stock of what these institutions mean to accomplish in our unsettled legal world.

There's A Competency For That! Competency Standards For The Successful Researcher., Gail A. Partin, Mary Jenkins

Gail A. Partin

No abstract provided.

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …

Vol. 46, No. 02 (January 27, 2014)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

Legal Writing - What's Next? Real-World, Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One—It’S Not What You Offer; It’S What You Require – Part Ii (In A Three-Part Series), Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

This essay (part two of a three-part series) strives to begin a collaborative discussion with legal writing, clinical, and doctrinal faculty about what “change” in legal education should mean. In Part I, the authors rolled out a blueprint for transformative change in legal writing pedagogy, which includes: (1) more required skills courses that mirror the actual practice of law; (2) a three-year program that includes up to four writing credits in every semester; and (3) increased collaboration between legal writing professors and doctrinal faculty. In this essay, we get more specific, and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that builds …

Vol. 46, No. 01 (January 20, 2014)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of The Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Changing Interpretations Of The Dmca And Future Implications For Copyright Holders, Hillary A. Henderson

Hillary A Henderson

Copyright law rewards an artificial monopoly to individual authors for their creations. This reward is based on the belief that, by granting authors the exclusive right to reproduce their works, they receive an incentive and means to create, which in turn advances the welfare of the general public by “promoting the progress of science and useful arts.” Copyright protection subsists . . . in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or …

Requiring Three Years Of Real-World Legal Writing Instruction: Law Students Need It; Prospective Employers Want It; The Future Of The Legal Profession Demands It, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

Part I of this three-part series set forth a blueprint for change. In this essay, we get more specific and propose a three-year legal writing curriculum that is designed to mirror the actual practice of law, from start to finish, and provide alternative paths for students who prefer to focus on transactional drafting or alternative dispute resolution. In so doing, we include: (1) required courses for each of the six semesters of law school; (2) a discussion of the practical skills that students will acquire in each course; (3) electives that students may take to complement their required courses; and …

Show, Don't Tell: Legal Writing For The Real World (Chapter Outline), Adam Lamparello, Megan E. Boyd

Adam Lamparello

Show, Don’t Tell is designed to help all members of the legal profession learn to effectively draft the most common litigation documents. Far too many books offer tips and advice about good writing, but don’t actually show the reader specific examples of good writing or show the reader why examples offered are effective. The authors have read many books on legal writing, but once we learned the basics of legal writing, we didn’t learn anything in those books to make us better writers. Why? We were exposed to the best theories, but never given practical, how-to tips to turn book …

Legal Writing--What's Next? Real-World Persuasion Pedagogy From Day One, Adam Lamparello, Charles E. Maclean

Adam Lamparello

So, why didn’t they teach me this in law school?” The problem has nothing to do with ‘bad’ or uncaring teachers, but with a pedagogical approach that mistakenly divorces the acquisition of legal knowledge—and practical skills training—from their functional roles in the real world. In law school, students are typically required to write a memorandum or an appellate brief, but without knowing how each document fits into the broader context of actual law practice, the student’s ability to put that knowledge to practical use is limited. Every litigation document, whether it is, for example, a legal memorandum, complaint, motion to …

No Shoehorn Required: How A Required, Three-Year, Persuasion-Based Legal Writing Program Easily Fits Within The Broader Law School Curriculum, Adam Lamparello, Charles Maclean

Adam Lamparello

In prior articles, we advocated for a required fifteen-credit, three-year, persuasion-based, linear legal writing curriculum. Our model begins with persuasive advocacy from the first day of law school, and takes a sequential approach that mirrors the practice of law — from the initial client meeting to the appellate brief.

It includes a separate track for those interested in transactional work, incorporates alternative dispute resolution and settlement simulations, and involves students in researching and drafting amicus briefs before federal appellate courts. Students are also offered several electives each semester to complement their required course load, and receive intense training in narrative …

What About The Majority? Considering The Legal Research Practices Of Solo And Small Firm Attorneys, Joseph D. Lawson

AALL/LexisNexis Call for Papers

Solo and small firm practitioners account for the majority of attorneys practicing in the United States. However, they are regularly underrepresented in studies of attorneys’ research practices, which tend to focus on attorneys in larger practice settings. This article reports the results of a local survey in which more than 80 percent of respondents fell into this forgotten demographic. Comparison of the local study with a recent national survey demonstrates that greater consideration of smaller firms could lead to a different understanding of fee-based online resource usage among the demographic, which may have widespread implications for public and academic law …

Law Firm Legal Research Requirements And The Legal Academy Beyond Carnegie, Patrick Meyer

Patrick Meyer

What types of research resources must new hires know how to use, and in which format(s)? To answer this question, this article starts by identifying the historical research deficiencies of new attorneys. The author goes on to summarize four recent and regarded law firm practice skills studies, as well as results of the author's 2010 law firm survey. This article concludes by identifying a three part plan to improve the lacking research skills of new attorneys.

On Legal Scholarship, Danielle K. Citron, Robin West

Shorter Faculty Works

Academic critics contend that legal scholarship is overly argumentative or too “normative,” simply stating what the law should be, as well as what the law is. It isn’t about pure scholarship’s pursuit of knowledge within the discipline of a recognized academic field. Critics from the bar and the judiciary proffer the opposite complaint: legal scholarship is too academic and not professional enough, enamored with fads, unmoored from any discipline and of little use to the practicing lawyer or sitting judge. Law schools’ legions of cost-conscious critics complain that paying high salaries to professors with low course loads drives up tuitions. …