Digital Commons Network^™

The Shallow State: The Federal Communications Commission And The New Deal, Daniel R. Ernst

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

American lawyers and law professors commonly turn to the New Deal for insights into the law and politics of today’s administrative state. Usually, they have looked to agencies created in the 1930s that became the foundation of the postwar political order. Some have celebrated these agencies; others have deplored them as the core of an elitist, antidemocratic Deep State. This article takes a different tack by studying the Federal Communications Commission, an agency created before the New Deal. For most of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first two presidential terms, the FCC languished within the “Shallow State,” bossed about by patronage-seeking politicians, …

The Ethics Of Using Cloud-Based Services And Products, Darla Jackson, Kenton S. Brice

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

A2j Summit Collection Contributors, David Udell

Fordham Law Review Online

A compilation of biographies for the authors and participants in this Collection.

All Rise For Civil Justice, Martha Bergmark

Fordham Law Review Online

Equal justice under law is an American ideal. But every year, millions of people lose their cases in civil courts, not because they have done something wrong, but because they do not have the information or legal help they need to make their case. The United States civil justice system must be reformed so that it works for everyone, not just for the wealthy and the represented. For guidance, advocates of civil justice reform should look to the movement for criminal justice reform, which has successfully raised awareness and galvanized coalitions to effect policy change. I eagerly await the case …

A Few Interventions And Offerings From Five Movement Lawyers To The Access To Justice Movement, Jennifer Ching, Thomas B. Harvey, Meena Jagannath, Purvi Shah, Blake Strode

Fordham Law Review Online

We are five lawyers who occupy very different corners of justice work. We are civil rights, human rights, and criminal defense lawyers, and we have worked at and managed legal services programs. We have taught law at law schools and universities and have built our own organizations. We currently work in interdisciplinary spaces with community organizers, funders, and other stakeholders in the justice system. As diverse as our perspectives are, we share a common belief that any mobilization around access to justice fails if it does not center the vision and strategies of larger social justice movements. We share here …

The Legal Empowerment Movement And Its Implications, Peter Chapman

Fordham Law Review Online

Around the world, a global legal empowerment movement is transforming the way in which people access justice. The concept of legal empowerment is rooted in strengthening the ability of communities to: “understand, use and shape the law.” The movement relies on people helping one another to stand up to authority and challenge injustice. At its center are paralegals, barefoot lawyers, and community advocates. Backed up by lawyers, these advocates are having significant impacts.

Integrating The Access To Justice Movement, Lauren Sudeall

Fordham Law Review Online

Last fall, advocates of social change came together at the A2J Summit at Fordham University School of Law and discussed how to galvanize a national access to justice movement—who would it include, and what would or should it attempt to achieve? One important preliminary question we tackled was how such a movement would define “justice,” and whether it would apply only to the civil justice system. Although the phrase “access to justice” is not exclusively civil in nature, more often than not it is taken to have that connotation. Lost in that interpretation is an opportunity to engage in a …

Don't Go It Alone, Ariel Simon, Sandra Ambrozy

Fordham Law Review Online

Civil legal challenges cut across an astonishing range of headline-making social issues. And so, while it is possible to make a compelling case for “access to justice” without tying it to issues of inequality, mobility, race, and equity, that is no way to build or ally with a movement. Access to justice should not just be about “justice” in a narrow legalistic sense, but in the way that the broader world understands it and people feel it, driven by imperatives such as: expanding opportunities for underserved populations; creating legal systems that protect the most vulnerable; and building institutions and structures …

A Perspective From The Judiciary On Access To Justice, Jonathan Lippman

Fordham Law Review Online

I decided early in 2009, upon becoming Chief Judge and the steward of the justice system in New York, to focus my energy on ensuring that everyone gets their day in court. Regardless of how a person looks or where he or she was born, and regardless of whether or not a person has resources or power, justice cannot be about the color of your skin or the amount of money in your pocket. Justice must mean that when people are fighting for the necessities of life, for the roof over their heads, they must get the legal assistance that …

Building The Access To Justice Movement, David Udell

Fordham Law Review Online

There are innumerable individual problems of access to civil justice. Civil justice, or its absence, will often determine whether people can keep their homes, their family relationships, their health and well-being, their actual safety, their jobs, and their opportunity for a fair resolution of so many more of the challenges that life presents. There are presently many important efforts that enable people to obtain justice, both through the direct provision of legal services and through the broader pursuit of systemic reforms, such as securing and expanding civil rights to counsel, expanding roles for non-lawyers to empower individuals and communities, making …

Professional Responsibility: An Open-Source Casebook, Brian L. Frye, Elizabeth Schiller

Law Faculty Books and Chapters

We wanted this casebook to be as easy to use and understand as possible. Accordingly, we included not only cases, but also the text of the rules and restatements, as well as concise explanations of the relevant law. Each chapter of the book addresses a different issue, in the following format. First, it clearly and concisely explains the relevant law governing that issue. Then provides the relevant text of any statutes, Model Rules, sections of the Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, or other sources, with a link to an open-source versions of the full text, when available. It provides …

General Education In The Legal Studies Curriculum, Marissa Moran

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Vol. 56, No. 11 (April 1, 2019)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Non-Lawyer Advocacy: Expectations, Rules, And Complications, John F. Wirenius

Cardozo International & Comparative Law Review

The article examines the ethical challenges and legal complexities surrounding nonattorney advocacy in labor relations, particularly under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and similar state statutes. It highlights the tension between holding non-lawyer union representatives to attorney ethical standards and the need for simpler, practical norms. The analysis emphasizes the importance of balancing due process for pro se parties with maintaining the integrity of advocacy roles, suggesting that resorting to fundamental statutory values and reciprocal duties can provide a baseline for ethical conduct.

Unfamiliar Justice: Indigent Criminal Defendants' Experiences With Civil Legal Needs, Lauren Sudeall, Ruth Richardson

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Our legal system - and much of the research conducted on that system - often separates people and issues into civil and criminal silos. However, those two worlds intersect and influence one another in important ways. The qualitative empirical study that forms the basis of this Article bridges the civil-criminal divide by exploring the life circumstances and events of public defender clients to determine how they experience and respond to civil legal problems.

To date, studies addressing civil legal needs more generally have not focused on those individuals enmeshed with the criminal justice system, even though that group offers a …

Tracking Client Outcomes: A Qualitative Assessment Of Civil Legal Aid's Use Of Outcomes Data, With Recommendations, David Udell, Amy Widman

Cardozo Journal of Equal Rights & Social Justice

In virtually all sectors of society, people are using data to improve what they do. Everyone, it seems, is interested in data, and is searching for best strategies to draw on its power. The stakes are high in the civil legal aid community, where strengthened advocacy can enable people to preserve their homes, their relationships with their children, their life savings, their physical and emotional well-being, and even their freedom.

Yet, in the civil legal aid community, awareness of the power of data is just beginning to take root. Traditionally, civil legal aid has been thinly funded, with little infrastructure …

The Upgraded Lawyer: Modern Technology And Its Impact On The Legal Profession, Thomas R. Moore

University of the District of Columbia Law Review

At the peak of the Space Race in 1963, President John F. Kennedy remarked that, despite the great leaps brought by technology, "man is still the most extraordinary computer of all." With the advent of the internet and artificial intelligence, today's technological advancements might have shaken even Kennedy's faith in human superiority. For the legal profession, new technology presents a challenge to traditional notions in the practice of law as well. Clients may grow to expect tech-savviness from their attorneys, especially when their cases involve digital concepts. At the same time, the necessity for flesh-and-blood counsel may be diminished by …

The New-Breed, “Die-Hard” Chinese Lawyer: A Comparison With American Civil Rights Cause Lawyers, James E. Moliterno, Rongjie Lan

Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

In times of social upheaval, lawyers can mark the way toward social change. In particular, when lawyers become more aggressive than traditional lawyers in the cause of fighting injustice, they face backlash from multiple sources, including government and their own profession. Such was the case during the U.S. civil rights movement. Unusually aggressive behavior by cause lawyers was met with hostility from their own profession and from government action. Those lawyers, while battered at times with physical violence, bar ethics charges, contempt of court, and state hostility, survived and changed social conditions at the same time they altered the culture …

Law School News: A Spring Break That Teaches - And Gives Back 03/11/2019, Edward Fitzpatrick

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Vol. 56, No. 08 (March 4, 2019)

Indiana Law Annotated

No abstract provided.

When Does Big Law Work?, Abraham J.B. Cable

Marquette Law Review

Law firms have grown from hundreds of lawyers to thousands of lawyers, and the conventional wisdom is that this trend fuels dissatisfaction among lawyers. This Article scrutinizes that conventional wisdom based on interviews with lawyers who joined large firms through law-firm mergers. These lawyers offer a valuable perspective on firm size because they made abrupt changes from small to large firms. Though some interviewees echoed the conventional wisdom, others suggested that larger firm size has limited or even positive effects on professional satisfaction. In one counter-narrative, large law firms are relatively diffuse organizations that have limited influence over individual lawyers. …

Rise Of The Robot Lawyers?, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The advent of artificial intelligence has provoked considerable speculation about the future of the American workforce, including highly educated professionals such as lawyers and doctors. Although most commentators are alarmed by the prospect of intelligent machines displacing millions of workers, this is not so with respect to the legal sector. Media accounts and some legal scholars envision a future where intelligent machines perform the bulk of legal work, and legal services are less expensive and more accessible. This future is purportedly at hand as lawyers struggle to compete with technologically savvy alternative legal service providers.

This Article challenges the notion …

Mandatory Legal Malpractice Insurance: Exposing Lawyers' Blind Spots, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

The legal landscape for lawyers’ professional liability in the United States is changing. In 2018, Idaho implemented a new rule requiring that lawyers carry legal malpractice insurance. The adoption of the Idaho rule was the first move in forty years by a state to require legal malpractice insurance since Oregon mandated lawyer participation in a malpractice insurance regime. Over the last two years, a few states have considered whether their jurisdictions should join Oregon and Idaho in requiring malpractice insurance for lawyers in private practice. To help inform the discussion, the article examines different positions taken in the debate on …

Marijuana Business Attorneys And The Professional Deference Standard, Andrew Dixon

Arkansas Law Review

Imagine that you practice as an attorney in the State of Arkansas. A client solicits your advice about opening a marijuana dispensary or cultivation center. The client might want you to assist him in filing a dispensary application with the State. On the other hand, she might want you to negotiate a commercial lease or to provide services to ensure compliance with municipal zoning laws. Although Arkansas voters approved a constitutional amendment permitting medical marijuana sales, you provide a clear warning to your client: possessing, manufacturing, selling, and distributing marijuana remains a federal crime. After these precautions, however, you proceed …

What Can Technology Do To Increase Access To Justice?, Vanessa Butnick Davis

University of Miami Law Review

No abstract provided.

Professions And Expertise: How Machine Learning And Blockchain Are Redesigning The Landscape Of Professional Knowledge And Organization, John Flood, Lachlan Robb

University of Miami Law Review

Machine learning has entered the world of the professions with differential impacts. Automation will have huge impacts on the nature of work and society. Engineering, architecture, and medicine are early and enthusiastic adopters of automation. Other professions, especially law, are late and, in some cases, reluctant adopters. This Article examines the effects of artificial intelligence (“AI”) and Blockchain on professions and their knowledge bases. We start by examining the nature of expertise in general and the function of expertise in law. Using examples from law, such as Gulati and Scott’s analysis of how lawyers create (or don’t create) legal agreements, …

Shared Deliberations: Learning From The Voices Of Social Justice Lawyers On Their Aspirations, Challenges And Roles, Ian Head

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lawyers in the U.S. who attempt to advocate for social justice issues, often on behalf of those communities most targeted by government institutions and oppressive legal systems, have unique perspectives into the challenges of using the law to create transformative change. This thesis examines the voices of over a dozen attorneys fighting not only on behalf of their clients, but also wrestling with how to best use a set of legal tools not meant for dismantling systems of power. Listening to how these legal advocates navigate their roles inside a system of laws created to consolidate rather than distribute power …

Champions For Justice 01/25/2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Champions For Justice & Public Interest Auction 2019, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Public Interest Auction

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Are You Experienced? 01-18-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.