Digital Commons Network^™

Encouraging The Development Of "Low Bono" Law Practices, Luz E. Herrera

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Professionalism For Doctrinal Professors, Paula Schaefer

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Infusing Technology Skills Into The Law School Curriculum, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

Legal education has never considered technological proficiency to be a key outcome. Law professors may debate the merits of audiovisual teaching tools: do they work when they should?; do they facilitate learning objectives or are they just toys?; whom should they call when something breaks?; and so on. Teachers use course management sites like TWEN and Blackboard to share information and manage basic course functions. Many fear that laptops and other devices distract students in class, and some institute outright bans. Among many law teachers, technology is warily accepted, but only for the purpose of achieving traditional educational objectives.

What …

Aspire: You Can Go Anywhere, University Of Michigan Law School

Miscellaneous Law School History & Publications

Pamphlet with information about the University of Michigan Law School alumni careers.

And Now A Crisis In Legal Education, James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

The current crisis in legal education coincides with a crisis in the practice of law. Law practice has changed as a result of technology, globalization, and economic pressures. The market for legal education's product, law graduates, have diminished. Law schools cannot remain the same in this environment. Except for a very small number of elite schools, those that do not adjust are at serious risk of failing.

An economic change has taken place against a system in which mostly corporate clients willingly paid for the training of beginners at major law firms. Law firms could absorb those costs if partners …

Human Capital Accounting, William D. Henderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Good Pretrial Lawyering: Planning To Get To Yes Sooner, Cheaper, And Better, John Lande

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

This Article summarizes the views of respected lawyers about how they negotiate, which were collected as described in Part II. Part III recommends that lawyers develop a strategic approach to negotiation, including general negotiation goals and plans to negotiate at the earliest appropriate time. Part IV outlines recommendations for lawyers to take charge of their cases from the outset, including getting a clear understanding of clients' interests, developing good relationships with counterpart lawyers, carefully investigating the cases, making strategic decisions about timing, and enlisting mediators and courts when needed. Part V provides two general suggestions for improving the quality of …

William Mitchell College Of Law's Hybrid Program For J.D. Study: Answering The Call For Innovation, Eric S. Janus, Gregory M. Duhl, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

In January 2015, William Mitchell College of Law will launch the first American Bar Association (ABA)-approved, on-campus/ online J.D. program to further the college's mission: to provide accessible, experiential, rigorous training for tomorrow's lawyers. Known as the hybrid program, it will offer a legal education to talented, hard-working students who cannot access a traditional J.D. program because of location or family or work commitments. In this article, we explain the origins and pedagogical foundations of the program, as well as give an overview of the program.

The Folly Of Expecting Evil: Reconsidering The Bar's Character And Fitness Requirements, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

The bar's character and fitness requirement is based on the largely untested premise that an applicant's past history helps predict whether that individual possesses the moral character needed to be a trustworthy lawyer. The primary purpose of the character inquiry is to protect the public and the judicial system from potentially problematic lawyers.The inquiry may also signal to the public that lawyers possess "good character" and deserve to be trusted with their important legal matters, thereby facilitating client representation and the administration of justice. An alternative-and more critical characterization of this purpose is that it is designed to protect the …

Constitutional Law—Unauthorized Practice Of Law: Driving Legal Business Without A License, Legalzoom, Inc., And Campbell V. Asbury Automotive, Inc., 2011 Ark. 157, 381 S.W.3d 21., Pierce G. Hunter

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Theorizing Billable Hours, Theresa M. Beiner

Law Faculty Scholarship

This article looks at the ethical and diversity implications of high billable hour requirements. While corporate counsel have increasingly demanded a diverse legal workforce and emphasized the need to lower the costs of outside counsel, law firms have not responded to these concerns in a manner that is producing results. Instead, women continue to drop out of law firm practice at higher rates than their male counterparts and the costs of legal services remain high. High billable hour requirements exacerbate both these problems and have implications as well for ethical lawyering. Using data from a variety of disciplines, the article …

Retaining Color, Veronica Root

Faculty Scholarship

It is no secret that large law firms are struggling in their efforts to retain attorneys of color. This is despite two decades of aggressive tracking of demographic rates, mandates from clients to improve demographic diversity, and the implementation of a variety of diversity efforts within large law firms. In part, law firm retention efforts are stymied by the reality that elite, large law firms require some level of attrition to function properly under the predominant business model. This reality, however, does not explain why firms have so much difficulty retaining attorneys of color—in particular black and Hispanic attorneys.

And …

“Doomed Social Engineering?” Ethics And Professionalism Related To Sexual Orientation: The Florida Experience, Robert W. Lee

Barry Law Review

No abstract provided.

In This, The Winter Of Our Discontent: Legal Practice, Legal Education, And The Culture Of Distrust, Barry Sullivan

Faculty Publications & Other Works

No abstract provided.

Keep Calm And Carry On, René Reich-Graefe

Faculty Scholarship

This Essay examines some of the hard data available for today’s legal market and develops very basic forecasts and hypotheses about what the future will bring for the U.S. legal profession during the next decades. In conclusion, it projects that recent law school graduates and current and future law students are standing at the threshold of the most robust legal market that ever existed in this country—a legal market which will grow, exist for, and coincide with, their entire professional careers. Using admittedly back-of-the-envelope math based on current trends affecting the legal market (in particular, lawyer retirements, population growth, and …

Lawyers Beware: You Are What You Post - The Case For Integrating Cultural Competence, Legal Ethics, And Social Media, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Rural Incentive Programs For Legal And Medical Professionals: A Comparative, Hannah Haksgaard

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Tax Advisors And Conflicted Citizens, Milton C. Regan

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Thousands of lawyers are involved every day in advising clients outside of litigation. These lawyers counsel clients on how they can benefit from or avoid violating statutes, regulations, and other sources of law. How should we think about the obligations of the lawyer in this setting? This article argues that we should eschew a single prescriptive model of the advisor in favor of a pluralistic conception that bases responsibilities on the salient factors of the context in which the advisor operates.

The model of the advocate that suggests that the lawyer take a relatively aggressive approach to interpreting the legal …

Friends Of Justice: Does Social Media Impact The Public Perception Of The Justice System?, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

Lawyers have long been recognized as being necessary in the effective functioning of an ordered society in roles as both officers of the court and, more broadly, as officers of the system of justice. In 2014, the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education report noted that "[s]ociety has a deep interest in the competence of lawyers, in their availability to serve society and clients, in the broad public role they can play, and in their professional values." Values such as those noted in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (advisor, counselor, and advocate) are instrumental in the …

Cracks In The Profession's Monopoly Armor, John Sahl

Akron Law Faculty Publications

This article examines the legal profession’s long-held monopoly in the nation’s legal services market in the context of two recent developments. The first development concerns the Conference of Chief Justices’ (CCJ) recent adoption of Resolution 15, “Encouraging Adoption of Rules Regarding Admission of Attorneys Who Are Dependents of Service Members.” Resolution 15 urges state bar authorities to develop and implement rules permitting admission without examination of lawyers who are military dependents. The CCJ’s rule promotes competition by facilitating the movement of lawyers from one geographic market to another.

The second development is Washington Supreme Court’s new Admission to Practice Rule …

Law Schools And The Legal Profession: A Way Forward, Peter A. Joy

Scholarship@WashULaw

Publicity about law schools for the past several years has been consistently bad. In news article after news article, the unifying theme has been that that there are too many lawyers, too many law schools, and that going to law school for a legal career is either a costly, risky proposition or simply a bad idea.' Of course, these laments about the legal education and the legal profession stem from the decline in the employment for lawyers in the United States since the financial crisis of 2008. While some see this simply as a mismatch in supply and demand - …

Revolution Imagined: Cause Advocacy, Consumer Rights, And The Evolving Role Of Ngos In Thailand, Frank W. Munger

Articles & Chapters

This article describes the founding and evolution of a “Thai-style” NGO dedicated to consumer protection. Through a description of the NGO and the career of its founder, the article brings to light features of the evolution of NGO based advocacy in Thailand from the student uprising in 1973 to the present. The legacy of the 1973 October Generation of activists continues to influence development of NGOs but new emphasis on rights has emerged since the era of constitutional reform in the 1990s. Many NGOs now make use of litigation to attempt to achieve social change, but litigation, like other long-standing …

Compliance And Claim Funding: Testing The Borders Of Lawyers' Monopoly And The Unauthorized Practice Of Law, Michele M. Destefano

Articles

No abstract provided.

Legal Academia And The Blindness Of The Elites, Paul Campos

Publications

No abstract provided.

Are Clinics A Magic Bullet?, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

In the current conversation about reforming legal education, one of the constant refrains is that law schools must graduate students who are "practice ready." Commentators go on to argue that for law schools to produce "practice ready" students, they must expand how they offer experiential learning. One potential way to do that is to expand clinical legal education programs. I worry that law schools (and others) are envisioning clinical legal education as a magic bullet that will solve all of the ills and imbalances present in current legal education. In this article, I demonstrate the unhelpfulness of the phrase "practice …

Clinical Collaborations: Going Global To Advance Social Entrepreneurship, Deborah Burand, Susan R. Jones, Jonathan Ng, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Articles

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client — Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers …

Clinical Collaborations: Going Global To Advance Social Entrepreneurship, Deborah Burand, Susan R. Jones, Jonathan Ng, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In the summer of 2012, transactional law clinics from three U.S. law schools: George Washington University; Georgetown University; and the University of Michigan launched a collaboration to serve a common client—Ashoka, a global nonprofit organization that supports close to 3,000 social entrepreneurs across 76 countries. While clinic collaborations within universities happen occasionally, clinic collaborations across universities are unusual. This essay focuses on the motivations, operations, lessons, and next steps of this cross-university, clinical collaboration aimed at advancing social entrepreneurship globally. Specifically, this essay examines why the collaboration was launched, how the collaboration is structured, what the collaboration offers clients and …

Implicit Bias Deserves Our Explicit Attention, Kimberly Jade Norwood

Scholarship@WashULaw

What are implicit biases? In brief, we all walk around with two sets of attitudes and beliefs: our conscious (explicit) attitudes and our unconscious (implicit) attitudes. Scientists believe that human consciousness takes up approximately 10 percent of our brain activity. That means that for most things, our unconscious mind is doing the work. Implicit biases exist within our unconscious mind. Our brains are bombarded with millions of bits of information every second. To avoid overload, our brains automatically categorize information into schemas that we use to guide us in our everyday living.

Grappling At The Grassroots: Access To Justice In India's Lower Tier, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Shirish N. Kavadi, Azima Girach, Dhanaji Khupkar, Kilindi Kokal, Satyajeet Mazumdar, Nupar, Gayatri Panday, Aatreyee Sen, Aqseer Sodhi, Bharati Takale Shukla

Articles by Maurer Faculty

From 2010 to 2012, a team of academic and civil society researchers conducted extensive ethnographies of litigants, judges, lawyers, and courtroom personnel within multiple districts in three states: Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Himachal Pradesh. This Article provides an in-depth account of the everyday struggles these actors face in the pursuit of their respective objectives. The findings illustrate a complex matrix of variables-including infrastructure, staffing, judicial training and legal awareness, costs and continuances, gender and caste discrimination, power imbalances, intimidation and corruption, miscellaneous delays, and challenges with specialized forums-impact access to justice in the lower tier. The results of this study offer …

Did The National Security Agency Destroy The Prospects For Confidentiality And Privilege When Lawyers Store Clients' Files In The Cloud--And What, If Anything, Can Lawyers And Law Firms Realistically Do In Response?, Sarah Jane Hughes

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.