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The Future Of American Legal Tech: Regulation, Culture, Markets, Benjamin H. Barton

Book Chapters

America’s legal technology boom presents a puzzle. On the one hand, America’s market for legal services is among the most tightly regulated in the world, suggesting infertile ground for a legal technology revolution. America has the world’s most robustly protected lawyer monopoly. Its version of the prohibition against the unauthorized practice of law (UPL) is among the broadest and most aggressive in the world because it theoretically bans all non-lawyers from giving any “legal advice” in addition to the more typical bar against filing papers or appearing in court. Likewise, America’s barriers to entering the legal profession are exceedingly high: …

2023 Racial Justice Challenge: Housing Law, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

P*Law 2023, Center For Public Service Law

2022–2023 Flyers

This document provides the complete schedule for P*LAW Week 2023 at Cardozo School of Law, organized by the Center for Public Service Law. Held from January 23 to January 26, the week featured panels, workshops, and interactive events addressing pressing issues in public interest law. Topics included judicial independence, disability rights, reproductive justice, climate legislation, student mental health, comprehensive sexual education, and qualified immunity. Events also offered students career support through the PILC Fair prep session and Mentor Mock Interviews, fostering professional growth and public service engagement.

Covid And Bar Admissions, Steven R. Smith

Arkansas Law Review

The COVID-19 pandemic, killings of George Floyd and others, and civil unrest created dislocation, hardship, and uncertainty. For millions of people, it included deaths in family, unemployment, and serious mental and physical illness. Graduates of professional schools preparing to take licensing examinations faced unexpected obstacles in meeting licensing standards for their chosen professions. It quickly became apparent, for example, that the usual licensing examination arrangements were problematic. The question for licensing authorities in 2020 was what accommodations would be appropriate to take account of the disruptions applicants faced while fully protecting the public’s interest in careful licensing.

Place-Based Versus Practice-Based Norms For American Lawyers: "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)", James E. Moliterno

Scholarly Articles

This Article acknowledges the growing trend toward practice-based lawyer norms, points out how it allows interaction between the existing place-based norms and the new practice-based norms, and compares this movement with the existing regulatory conditions outside the US. If there is movement from the world as we know it (place-based norms) to a world as it may come to be (practice-based norms), is the change tragic, inevitable, risky, in line with the rest of the global legal profession, or all of the above and more? Specifically, how would such an evolution affect the core duty of lawyer-client confidentiality?

Deborah L. Rhode In Memoriam: Three Stories And Ten Life Lessons, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

In this Essay, Professor Benjamin H. Barton offers a heartfelt tribute to the late legal scholar, Professor Deborah L. Rhode. Professor Barton reflects on Rhode’s prolific career, which spanned areas including legal ethics, feminism and women in the law, and lawyers as leaders. He also examines Rhode’s later works, which delved into more personal topics such as character, ambition, and legacy. Through personal anecdotes and life lessons, Professor Barton honors Rhode’s legacy as a model academic, mentor, and transformative force in the legal profession.

Jj Rosenbaum's Comments - Panel 2, Jj Rosenbaum

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Role Of The Aba’S “Summits” In Facilitating Global Networks And International Cross-Border Legal Practice, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This Article was written for a Symposium honoring recently-retired Professor Bob Lutz. It describes fourteen gatherings that were organized by either the ABA Section of International Law’s Transnational Legal Practice Committee or by the predecessor entities to the ABA Standing Committee on International Trade in Legal Services. Professor Lutz was a driving force behind these gatherings, which were held between 2004 and 2014, and were referred to by the organizers as “Summits.” This Article examines the impact of these Summits and explains why they played a critical role in helping establish global legal profession networks among U.S. legal profession stakeholders …

How Do Japanese Clients View Their Lawyers -- And How Did Those Views Change Over The Decade Between Surveys? [Bengoshi Ni Taisuru Soshōtōjisha No Hyōka – 10nen De Hyōka Wa Dou Kawatta Ka], Daniel H. Foote

Chapters in Books

A central component of the Civil Litigation Behavior Research Project (2003-2008) and the successor Civil Litigation Research Project (2016-2020) was a set of surveys of litigants in civil cases.1 For comparison purposes, each project also included a survey of the general public, containing a number of identical or similar questions. Among the many aspects of the litigation experience covered in the surveys, several questions focused on the lawyer-client relationship. These included questions about access to lawyers, advice by lawyers, and client evaluations of and level of satisfaction with the lawyers who represented them. After briefly examining some of the ways …

The World Moved On Without Me: Redefining Contraband In A Technology-Driven World For Youth Detained In Washington State, Stephanie A. Lowry

Seattle University Law Review

If you ask a teenager in the United States to show you one of their favorite memories, they will likely show you a picture or video on their cell phone. This is because Americans, especially teenagers, love cell phones. Ninety-seven percent of all Americans own a cell phone according to a continuously updated survey by the Pew Research Center. For teenagers aged thirteen to seventeen, the number is roughly 95%. For eighteen to twenty-nine-year-olds, the number grows to 100%. On average, eight to twelve-year-old’s use roughly five and a half hours of screen media per day, in comparison to thirteen …

Taking On The Ethical Obligation Of Technology Competency In The Academy: An Empirical Analysis Of Practice-Based Technology Training Today, Jessica De Perio Wittman

Faculty Articles and Papers

Today's lawyers must be technologically competent, per Model Rule of Professional Conduct 1.1. Law schools and law firms were keenly aware of this expectation and summarily responded. While law firms offered more professional development opportunities, law schools began offering various courses focusing on technology skills. These courses have increased and evolved over time as the curriculum has changed with the technology. First, we present the evolution of ethical requirements surrounding legal technology competency and offer a description of the lawyering competency models most discussed today. We then review data about technology trends at the most innovative law firms and examine …

Artificial Intelligence And Ethics, Carol M. Bast

Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

This paper focuses on the impact that artificial intelligence has had on the practice of law and ethics rules. In some respects, the ethics rules, comments, and continuing legal education requirements incorporate knowledge of technology into the duty of attorney competence. After offering a primer on artificial intelligence and attorney ethics, the paper discusses certain proposals for revising the ethics rules, comments, and continuing legal education requirements.

Loyalty, Conscience, And Withdrawal: Are Government Lawyers Different?, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

There is a growing recognition that the core concepts and specific rules of legal ethics can have unusual and even unique implications for government lawyers. In this short essay, I examine how loyalty, conscience, and withdrawal apply to government lawyers. I argue that while government lawyers should be slower than lawyers in private practice to exercise their professional discretions to withdraw from a matter, they must be particularly ready to withdraw when unavoidably required – despite any selfless dedication to the ideal of a non-partisan public service.

The Continuing Application Of Gladue Principles In The Professional Discipline Of Indigenous Lawyers: A Comment On Law Society Of Ontario V Mccullough, Andrew Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

While Gladue principles have previously been applied in the professional discipline of Indigenous lawyers, the recent decision of the Law Society Tribunal in Law Society of Ontario v McCullough affirms and applies those precedents in new and powerful ways. In this case comment, I explain the ways in which McCullough is important in its application of Gladue principles and consider what questions remain to be settled in future decisions.

101 Lawyers: Attorney Appearances In Twitter V. Musk, Andrew K. Jennings

Faculty Articles

In summer 2022, Twitter sued Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over his refusal to close his agreed-to $44 billion acquisition of the social-media company. Twitter v. Musk had the makings of corporate law’s trial of the century. Leading law firms represented Twitter, Musk, and third parties in a dispute with enormous financial, social, and political implications. In the lead up to trial, however, Musk relented and closed the deal. The corporate trial of the century was a bust, over almost as soon as it began.

But in the meantime, in Twitter’s eighty-six days …

Modalities Of Social Change Lawyering, Christine Cimini, Doug Smith

Lewis & Clark Law Review

The last decade has seen the rise of new kinds of grassroots social movements. Movements including Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Sunrise, and #MeToo pushed back against long-standing political, economic, and social crises, including income inequality, racial inequality, police violence, climate change, and the widespread culture of sexual abuse and harassment. As these social change efforts evolve, a growing body of scholarship has begun to theorize the role of lawyers within these new social movements and to identify lawyering characteristics that contribute to sustaining social movements over time. This Article surveys this body of literature and proposes a typology …

Race And Entrepreneurship: Reclaiming Narratives, Priya Baskaran, Alicia E. Plerhoples

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay makes the case for engaging in counter-narratives and inclusive storytelling within the transactional clinic curriculum. The authors leverage lessons from Critical Race Theory to amplify the voices and experiences of underrepresented entrepreneurs and marginalized communities in both clinic seminar and selected casework. In doing so, we challenge hegemonic narratives of entrepreneurship and expose our law students to the presence and impact of interlocking systems of subordination that minimize the existence and contributions of entrepreneurs of color. We challenge our law students and ourselves to become more creative and thoughtful lawyers to a more inclusive and diverse set of …

Clients And Lawyers Unite: The Dysfunction Of Law Firm Teams Need A Cure, Joseph Regalia, David Wallace

Scholarly Works

Attorneys and clients have made clear: Dysfunctional law firm teams are not working. Gone are the days when lawyers had to quietly endure poor management, poor planning, and all-around poor work dynamics. Growing pressure on lawyers to get more efficient and produce more value—and a welcome focus on lawyer wellbeing—means that law firms can no longer ignore their responsibility to cultivate better workplaces.

It is no secret that law firm lawyers consistently rank as among the least happy workers in the world. And team dynamics—how attorneys and other legal professionals work together—may be a bigger piece of that puzzle than …

Law License Reciprocity’S Discriminatory Exclusion Of Working Mothers, Sarah W. Keller

Oklahoma Law Review

No abstract provided.

Are Lawyers’ Case Selection Decisions Biased? A Field Experiment On Access To Justice, Jens Frankenreiter, Michael A. Livermore

Scholarship@WashULaw

The attorney-client relationship is pivotal in providing access to courts. This paper presents results from a large-scale field experiment exploring how demographic information (encoded in potential clients’ names) affects how attorneys respond to initial inquiries in private injury cases. On the basis of prior literature, we hypothesize that race is a significant factor, but we also explore race and gender interactions. We find that ostensibly Black or Hispanic inquirers receive fewer responses than ostensibly White inquirers, a result largely driven by preferential treatment of White female inquirers. The racial disparities are larger than those previously documented in contexts such as …

Legal Innovation & Technology: A Practical Skills Guide For The Modern Lawyer, Dyane O'Leary

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

Plenty of people talk about technology changing the practice of law but what does it all mean for a lawyer’s everyday skills? The answers lie in Legal Innovation & Technology: A Practical Skills Guide for the Modern Lawyer. This book is the first student-centered coursebook of its kind. It is a comprehensive instructional source combining background explanation of changes to the legal industry with practical guidance on topics such as electronically stored information, document proficiency, advanced research analytics, cybersecurity, automation, client-centered law practice management technology, and remote lawyering.

Geared toward readers at the early stage of their careers, Legal …

The Problematic Structure Of Indigent Defense Delivery, Eve Brensike Primus

Michigan Law Review

The national conversation about criminal justice reform largely ignores the critical need for structural reforms in the provision of indigent defense. In most parts of the country, decisions about how to structure the provision of indigent defense are made at the local level, resulting in a fragmented patchwork of different indigent defense delivery systems. In most counties, if an indigent criminal defendant gets representation at all, it comes from assigned counsel or flat-fee contract lawyers rather than public defenders. In those assigned-counsel and flat-fee contract systems, the lawyers representing indigent defendants have financial incentives to get rid of assigned criminal …

Contingency Fee Conflicts: Attorneys Push For Quick-Kill Settlements When Their Clients Would Be Better Off Going To Trial, Steve Calandrillo, Chryssa V. Deliganis, Neela Brocato

Articles

Despite the checkered history of contingency fees in the practice of law, attorneys often claim that such fee arrangements perfectly align the interests of lawyer and client. After all, contingency fee lawyers proclaim in TV ad after TV ad, "we don’t get paid unless you win." That superficial logic does not withstand economic scrutiny. Utilizing a behavioral economics lens, this Article demonstrates that contingency fee arrangements give attorneys excessive incentives to settle cases that their clients would be better off taking all the way through trial. In addition to highlighting this undertheorized problem in law, we offer normative recommendations to …

Changemakers: From The Classroom To The Courtroom: Miguel Garcia, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Changemakers: Elevating Conversations Around Indigenous Peoples' Rights, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Outsourcing Self-Regulation, Marsha Griggs

All Faculty Scholarship

Answerable only to the courts that have the sole authority to grant or withhold the right to practice law, lawyers operate under a system of self-regulation. The self-regulated legal profession staunchly resists external interference from the legislative and administrative branches of government. Yet, with the same fervor that the legal profession defies non-judicial oversight, it has subordinated itself to the controlling influence of a private corporate interest. By outsourcing the mechanisms that control admission to the bar, the legal profession has all but surrendered the most crucial component of its gatekeeping function to an industry that profits at the expense …

Building A Culture Of Scholarship With New Clinical Teachers By Writing About Social Justice Lawyering, Susan Bennett, Binny Miller, Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, Caroline Wick

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

This Article is a collection of essays about teaching social justice lawyering, as seen through the eyes of eight practitioners-in-residence in the clinical program at American University’s Washington College of Law (“WCL”). They include: Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, and Caroline Wick. They teach in seven clinics, including the Civil Advocacy Clinic, the Criminal Justice Clinic, the Community Economic and Equity Development Clinic, the Disability Rights Law Clinic, the Immigrant Justice Clinic, the International Human Rights Law Clinic, and the Janet R. Spragens Federal Income Tax Clinic. We use the terms …

Fifty Years Of Clinical Legal Education At American University Washington College Of Law: The Evolution Of A Movement In Theory, Practice, And People, Robert D. Dinerstein, Elliott S. Milstein, Ann C. Shalleck

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Clinical legal education has evolved substantially in the fifty years since Elliott Milstein initiated the clinical model at American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”) that, notwithstanding numerous changes in program and personnel since that time, remains essentially in effect today. In this Article, we explore the theoretical, pedagogical, structural, programmatic, and personnel developments that have occurred during this period. We link these developments to broader developments within the national and international clinical legal education spheres. WCL’s Clinical Program, and its clinical faculty, have been leaders in shaping these developments, but, in the best clinical tradition, we have not done …

Liberty And Justice For Y’All: Allowing Legal Paraprofessionals To Practice Law To Reduce The Effects Of Legal Deserts In Rural Georgia, Amanda Claxton

Mercer Law Review

The lack of attorneys in rural America is not merely a social or cultural problem—it is a legal problem that officers of the courts cannot continue to ignore. Legal deserts are geographical areas where legal services are widely unavailable. Particularly in rural Georgia, legal deserts are a substantial issue. Attorneys and nonprofit organizations have attempted to ease the detrimental effects of legal deserts in a variety of ways; for various reasons, those efforts have been insufficient, and rural counties struggle to attract lawyers. Still, there is one method of resolving legal deserts that Georgia has yet to attempt: creating an …

Vol. 63, No. 12 (November 14, 2022)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.