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First Person Singular, John W. Reed

Articles

The hot topic in legal circles is the decline of professionalism. In this often negative age, it ranks right up there with "What's wrong with American schools?" and "Where will we live when the ozone is gone?" and "How can we get a handle on drugs?"-all those terrible things.

Educational Debts And The Worsening Position Of Small-Firm, Government, And Legal-Services Lawyers, David L. Chambers

Articles

Law school operating costs are up. Tuitions are up. The debts of law students are up. What is happening to the students who have borrowed large sums? Are their debts affecting their decisions about the jobs to seek? Once in practice, are they significantly affecting the standard of living they can afford to maintain? What, in particular, is the effect of debts on those who enter-or contemplate entering-small firms, government, legal services, and "public interest" work where salaries are lower than in most other settings in which lawyers work? In the preceding essay, Jack Kramer has performed another extremely valuable …

Nonlawyers In The Business Of Law: Does The One Who Has The Gold Really Make The Rules?, Thomas R. Andrews

Articles

For at least sixty years nonlawyers have been prohibited from offering their nonlegal talents in a business combination with lawyers practicing law. Moreover, when the ABA's new model rules were adopted in 1983, the ABA considered carefully but rejected a proposal that would have lifted the traditional ban on nonlawyer ownership of a law business. Nonetheless, the point of each article was that the relevant restrictions in the ethical rules are on their way out.

Commentators have given considerable attention to the unauthorized practice of law by nonlawyers, and to the offering of legal services by nonprofit institutions. The focus …

Coming Of Age In A Corporate Law Firm: The Economics Of Associate Career Patterns, Ronald J. Gilson, Robert H. Mnookin

Faculty Scholarship

The traditional American corporate law firm, long an oasis of organizational stability, in recent years has been the subject of dramatic change. The manner in which firms divide profits, perhaps the most revealing aspect of law firm organization because it displays the balance the firm has selected between risk-sharing and incentives, has changed in a critical way. From a long standing reliance on seniority that emphasizes risk-sharing, profit division is shifting to a system based on the productivity of individual partners that emphasizes incentives. With what seems to be only a short time lag from the change in how profits …

After Professional Virtue, Geoffrey C. Hazard Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Are Some Lawyers More Equal Than Others?, Sydney M. Cone Iii.

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Vol. 12, No. 5 (November 1988)

Exordium

No abstract provided.

Nonrefundable Retainers: Impermissible Under Fiduciary, Statutory And Contract Law, Lester Brickman, Lawrence A. Cunningham

Articles

Since the New York Court of Appeals banned nonrefundable retainers, numerous other courts have joined in prohibiting this widespread practice of lawyers charging a fee for services in advance and keeping the fee even if the services are not performed. This may reflect increased judicial recognition of the effect of egregious fee practices on the image of the bar and the role such practices play in the declining esteem in which the legal profession is held. Among the more provocative contributors to this ongoing debate, Professor Steven Lubet recently reviewed our work advocating the ban against nonrefundable retainers and posed …

Volume 11, Issue 2 (Fall 1988)

Transcript

No abstract provided.

Fall 1988

Bill of Particulars

No abstract provided.

Vol. 12, No. 3 (September 1988)

Exordium

No abstract provided.

Funding Legal Services For The Poor: Floria's Iota Program -- Now Is The Time To Make It Mandatory, Gregory A. Hearing

Florida State University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Washington And Lee Law Commencement, Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Powell Speeches

No abstract provided.

The 1988 Vanderbilt Law Review Symposium The Modern Practice Of Law: Assessing Change, William E. Pilsk

Vanderbilt Law Review

The legal profession has long embraced an ironic contradiction:lawyers help clients respond to or create change, yet at the same time lawyers steep themselves in tradition and pride themselves on professional stability. Thus we have the image of the conservative, pedigreed attorney, clad in dark wool, who helps his client accomplish new and daring objectives, but who generally resists changes in his or her relationship with the client. For many years this image has served as the ideal for the legal profession, and rules and standards evolved to preserve that ideal.For generations the legal profession has adhered to its traditions …

Attorney Advertising And Competition At The Bar, Terry Calvani, James Langenfeld, Gordon Shuford

Vanderbilt Law Review

Generally, advertising tends to lower prices and stimulate competition. This unexceptional statement becomes controversial, however,when applied to the legal profession. Indeed, only the newest members of the bar cannot recall the time when both professional and legal strictures precluded attorneys from advertising. Attorney advertising has been, and probably remains, a controversial subject. This Article analyzes attorney advertising and the regulations that police it. The Article begins by discussing the legal history of restraints on advertising.The Article then presents an economic analysis of the effects of attorney advertising. Finally, the Article examines the empirical evidence measuring the impact of attorney advertising …

The Challenge Of Change: The Practice Of Law In The Year 2000, James W. Jones

Vanderbilt Law Review

The past two decades have witnessed extraordinary changes that will have a lasting impact on the structure of the legal profession and the ways in which lawyers approach their practices. Some twenty years ago the legal profession was remarkably stable, having changed little in the preceding 100 years. The bar was relatively small, fairly homogeneous, mostly male, and overwhelmingly white anglo-saxon Protestant.The profession was, in the main, a close-knit fraternity of like-minded practitioners who shared a strong sense of common values and a general disdain for any efforts to commercialize the profession. The American Bar Association's 1908 Canons of Ethics …

The Noblesse Oblige Tradition In The Practice Of Law, David Luban

Vanderbilt Law Review

In 1905 Louis D. Brandeis delivered a talk entitled The Opportunity in the Law to the Harvard Ethical Society.' It was delivered as a pep talk, what Harvard Law Professor Duncan Kennedy, seventy-six years later, would refer to as "the old address to the troops." Brandeis hoped to rally law students to his vision of the moral possibilities of legal practice-specifically, the elite corporate legal practice into which Brandeis could assume his audience would enter. Brandeis was concerned that elite lawyers were becoming thralls of robber-baron capitalists, that they were ignoring the possibilities of law practice as a kind of …

The Review, Spring 1988, University Of Kentucky College Of Law

Annual Magazines

No abstract provided.

Attorney's Fee Contingency Enhancements: Toward A Complete Incentive To Litigate Under Federal Fee-Shifting Statutes—Pennsylvania V. Delaware Valley Citizens' Council For Clean Air, 107 S. Ct. 3078 (1987), Arthur J. Lachman

Washington Law Review

Federal fee-shifting statutes generally allow trial courts to award "reasonable" attorney's fees to prevailing parties in order to promote private enforcement of Congressional statutory directives. The starting point for the computation of fee awards under the fee-shifting statutes is the "lodestar" amount. The "lodestar" amount is defined as the reasonable number of hours spent by the attorney on the case multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. Trial courts, in their discretion, have then enhanced the lodestar amount based on a variety of factors, including the quality of representation, delay in receiving payment, and contingency. Contingency is defined as the risk …

Class Of 1988 Five Year Report, University Of Michigan Law School

UMLS Alumni Survey Class Reports

This report summarizes the findings of a questionnaire sent to University of Michigan Law School alumni five years after graduation.

Excessive Fees And Attorney Discipline: The Committee On Legal Ethics V. Tatterson, Cassandra M. Neely

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Vol. 12, No. 1 (January/February 1988)

Exordium

No abstract provided.

Professional Responsibility, Clark D. Cunningham

Faculty Publications By Year

No abstract provided.

Automatic Generation Of A Legal Expert System From A Normalized Interpretation Of Legal Rules, Layman E. Allen

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Changed Legal Profession: Who Has Control Of The Market For Legal Services?, Frederick H. Zemans

Articles & Book Chapters

During the nineteen sixties, it was provincial governments rather than lawyers or their professional societies, which determined that there would be a significant increase in the number of places for Jaw students at Canadian universities. Formula-funding programmes (in place in several provinces) along with a growing demand for law degrees stimulated government- funded universities to open their doors to students seeking a legal education and ultimately entrance to the legal profession. Prior to the late seventies, little opposition was encountered from the profession to its loss of control of the supply of lawyers. The economic recession, combined with the growth …

The Award Of Attorney's Fees To Prevailing Defendants Under The Washington Long Arm Statute, Valner L. Johnson

Washington Law Review

Numerous state and federal statutes award winning litigants attorney's fees from losing litigants. The Washington long arm statute, section 4.28.185(5) of the Revised Code of Washington, allows prevailing nonresident defendants to recover their attorney's fees from losing resident plaintiffs. The statute provides that when defendants are personally served outside the state on causes of action enumerated in the statute, the court may require a plaintiff to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees. This Comment argues that the judicial implementation of this provision inappropriately inflicts injury upon Washington plaintiffs while often failing to protect nonresident defendants.

The Award Of Attorney's Fees To Prevailing Defendants Under The Washington Long Arm Statute, Valner L. Johnson

Washington Law Review

Numerous state and federal statutes award winning litigants attorney's fees from losing litigants. The Washington long arm statute, section 4.28.185(5) of the Revised Code of Washington, allows prevailing nonresident defendants to recover their attorney's fees from losing resident plaintiffs. The statute provides that when defendants are personally served outside the state on causes of action enumerated in the statute, the court may require a plaintiff to pay the defendant's reasonable attorney's fees. This Comment argues that the judicial implementation of this provision inappropriately inflicts injury upon Washington plaintiffs while often failing to protect nonresident defendants.

Professional Qualification And Educational Requirements For Law Practice In A Foreign Country: Bridging The Cultural Gap, Roger J. Goebel

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will discuss preparation for transnational legal practice, and the extent of the right to engage in transnational legal practice in major commercial centers. It is divided into five parts: (I) the role of the transnational lawyer in bridging the cultural gap; (II) education in preparation for transnational practice; (III) professional qualification requirements for foreign lawyers in New York and several major commercial centers abroad; (IV) the extent of the lawyer's right to provide services and the right of professional establishment in the EEC; and (V) some general reflections on desirable qualification requirements for law firms and individuals to …

A Love Of Excellence, Harry L. Carrico

University of Richmond Law Review

This is an address delivered by Harry L. Carrico, Chief Justice of the Virginia Supreme Court, at the T. C. Williams School of Law annual banquet honoring merit scholarship sponsors and recipients. At this banquet, Dean Joseph D. Harbaughpresented Justice Carricowith a plaque honoringhim for his unique and extensive contributions both to the legal profession in Virginia and to the T. C. Williams Law School.

Lawyers As Assimilators And Preservers, Thomas L. Shaffer, Mary M. Shaffer

Journal Articles

The United States, more than most nation-states, has a history of confrontations between one culture and another, and of law as a means of ending cultural confrontations. Again and again in America, our dominant Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture has dealt with an alien culture and, as the story is usually told, overcome it. The dominant culture has used the law to bring the vulnerable culture into conformity to what we have referred to as "the American way."

We want to suggest that such a legal figure has two ways of using his legal power to deal between cultures—ways that are different …