Digital Commons Network^™

Deconstructing Teresa O'Brien: A Role Play For Domestic Violence Clinics, Leigh S. Goodmark, Catherine F. Klein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Law Is The Answer? Do We Know That For Sure? Questioning The Efficacy Of Legal Interventions For Battered Women, Leigh S. Goodmark

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Exceeding Our Boundaries: Transnational Employment Law Practice And The Export Of American Lawyering Styles To The Global Worksite, Susan Bisom-Rapp

Faculty Scholarship

Until very recently, one almost never heard mention of international issues among labor and employment law practitioners in the United States. Conventional wisdom considers this practice area quintessentially local. Identifying a trend that unseats this taken-for-granted notion, the article details the birth of a new employment law sub-specialty: international labor and employment law. Some U.S. management attorneys, working with transnational legal teams comprised of lawyers from foreign firms, are beginning to coordinate multinational clients' employment law projects across multiple national jurisdictions. While the world's legal regimes that regulate labor markets are remarkably culturally specific, the formation of transnational networks of …

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act: A Bird's-Eye View, Niels Schaumann

Faculty Scholarship

It is the goal of this article to provide a brief reference to the multitude of changes in the law wrought by SOX. The author's hope is that this will be of use to students, scholars, and practitioners seeking an overview of the extensive changes resulting from this legislation. The discussion is broader than it is deep; indeed, a work attempting to examine SOX in depth would soon become a treatise and not just an article. The remainder of this article, then, will seek to provide a big-picture view of SOX: Part II of this article will address SOX regulation …

The Private Foundation's Topsy Turvy Road In The American Political Process, William H. Byrnes Iv

Faculty Scholarship

This article studies this American political debate on the charitable tax exemption from 1864 to 1969, in particular, the debate regarding philanthropic, private foundations. The article's premise is that the debate's core has little evolved since that between the 1850s and 1870s. To create perspective, a short brief of the modern economic significance of the foundation sector follows. Thereafter, the article begins with a review of the preand post-colonial attitudes toward charitable institutions leading up to the 1800s debates, illustrating the incongruity of American policy regarding whether and to what extent to grant charities tax exemption. The 1800s state debates …

Learning Business Law By Doing It: Real Transactions In Law School Clinics, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

This Article discusses the business clinic movement and how legal educators view them as being an excellent vehicle for inculcating the values and practices that business lawyers hold dear. Business clinics may help students better appreciate the challenges of business lawyering, which they sometimes misunderstand as merely a forms practice. The Author believes that by putting students in the middle of real transactions, they gain a deeper understanding of the subtleties of making a transaction come together.

Copyright Class War, Niels Schaumann

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Who Gets In? The Quest For Diversity After Grutter, Margaret E. Montoya, Athena Mutua, Sheldon Zedeck, Frank H. Wu, Charles E. Daye, David L. Chambers

Faculty Scholarship

Transcript of The 2004 James McCormick Mitchell Lecture. On March 8, 2004, the University at Buffalo Law School hosted its annual Mitchell Lecture,1 a panel discussion entitled, "Who Gets In? The Quest for Diversity After Grutter." The Mitchell Committee decided to focus this year's lecture on innovative proposals to ensure diversity in law school admissions in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which confirmed that race and ethnicity could be taken into consideration in admission decisions for diversity purposes. Noting that much of the debate about Grutter thus far has emphasized the decision's constitutionality or its …

Religious Lawyering In A Liberal Democracy: A Challenge And An Invitation William A. Brahms Lecture On Law & Religion, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

At a time when many believe that law is no longer a noble profession, many lawyers see no reason to devote time and energy to promoting the public good. Religious lawyering may offer a powerful antidote: a robust framework for lawyers to integrate into their professional lives their most deeply rooted values, perspectives and critiques, and persuasive reasons to improve the quality of justice and work for the common good. At its best, religious lawyering echoes Martin Luther King's advice to the street sweeper. How wonderful it would be, indeed, if we practiced law so well that the host of …

Legal Institutions And International Trade Flows, Daniel Berkowitz, Johannes Moenius, Katharina Pistor

Faculty Scholarship

Globalization and increasing international flows of goods and capital have created a sense that the importance of individual nation states and the public goods they provide, including law and law enforcement institutions, is in decline. Opting out of domestic legal institutions and into those of a third country or into an "international" architecture have been elevated to important complements, if not substitutes for "good" institutions at home. If traders and investors could indeed effectively opt-out of their home jurisdiction's legal systems, we should observe empirically that the quality of domestic institutions has little impact on international patterns of trade flows. …

Mississippi Class Actions And The Inevitability Of Mass Aggregate Litigation, Howard M. Erichson

Faculty Scholarship

It's not about whether there will be mass aggregate litigation, but how. As long as the economy features mass marketing, mass employment, mass entertainment, mass transportation, mass production of goods, and mass provision of services, disputes will arise in which a mass of claimants seek relief from a common defendant or set of defendants. Lawyers on both sides naturally handle such matters collectively rather than individually. With or without the judicial imprimatur of class certification, multi- claimant disputes routinely are litigated and resolved on a collective basis. The real question is not whether there will be mass litigation, but whether …

Introduction: The New Economy And The Unraveling Social Safety Net, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Economic Organization In The Construction Industry: A Case Study Of Collaborative Production Under High Uncertainty, William A. Klein, Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Uncorporated Professionals, John Romley, Eric L. Talley

Faculty Scholarship

Professional service providers who wish to organize as multi-person firms have historically been limited to the partnership form. Such organizational forms trade the benefit of risk diversification off against the costs of diluted incentives and liability exposure in choosing their optimal size. More recently, states have permitted limited-liability entities that combine the simplicity, flexibility and tax advantages of a partnership with the liability shield of a corporation. We develop a game theoretic model of professional-firm organization that integrates the provision of incentives in a multi-person firm with the choice of business form. We then test the model's predictions with a …

Legal And Ethical Duties Of Lawyers After Sarbanes-Oxley, Roger C. Cramton, George M. Cohen, Susan P. Koniak

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the legal and ethical duties of lawyers after Sarbanes-Oxley, focusing on the application, interpretation and ambiguities of the SEC rule implementing Section 307. Although our primary frame of reference will be on the SEC's new rules as an aspect of lawyer regulation, those rules are part of federal securities laws and should be considered in that aspect, i.e., whether they advance the purposes of the federal securities laws. The rules affecting lawyers should not be assessed in a vacuum as a mere turf war between federal regulators on the one hand and the organized bar and its …

Be Not Afraid Of Change: Time To Eliminate The Corporate Practice Of Medicine Doctrine, Nicole Huberfeld

Faculty Scholarship

This article argues that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine is a physician-centric, guild type doctrine that is misplaced in the present incarnation of the American healthcare system and that does nothing to improve quality, efficiency, or accountability. The paper focuses on three key reasons that the corporate practice of medicine doctrine should be laid to rest. First, the motives for creating the corporate practice of medicine doctrine are long gone, as physicians have not been able to operate as a guild of autonomous providers of healthcare for quite some time. Second, it is disingenuous to pretend that physicians are …

The Changing World Of Employee Benefits, Maria O'Brien

Faculty Scholarship

When I graduated from law school in 1985, there were no courses offered in employee benefits law. Nor, as near as I can recall, was ERISA ever discussed in any of the labor and employment classes I took. There was no mention in the introductory labor law course or in other classes about employment discrimination, union organizing, and employment arbitration. Now, in contrast, many law schools include a course on employee benefits and ERISA, and students hoping to work in the labor and employment area frequently find that ERISA work is plentiful, and traditional NLRA work is not. This, of …

Who Gets In? The Quest For Diversity After Grutter, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Counselor, Gatekeeper, Shareholder, Thief: Why Attorneys Who Invest In Their Clients In A Post-Enron World Are "Selling Out," Not "Buying In,", A. Christine Hurt

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Dead To Rights: A Father's Struggle To Secure Mental Health Services For His Son. Georgetown Journal On Poverty Law And Policy, April Land

Faculty Scholarship

This Article analyzes the gap between children's statutory rights and their actual access to services within the educational, medical and juvenile justice systems. This Article lays out the strong statutory rights and protections in the areas of special education and contrasts them with actual experience in trying to secure appropriate education, Medicaid and the juvenile justice system. The Article concludes that the agencies responsible for administering federal law must not be permitted to continue to avoid compliance with clear statutory mandates. They are failing to meet their legal responsibilities by asserting that services should be provided by other agencies, rather …

Attorney-Client Sex: A Feminist Critique Of The Absence Of Regulation, Malinda L. Seymore

Faculty Scholarship

Doctors can't do it. Psychotherapists can't do it. Ministers can't do it. Chiropractors and social workers can't do it. But lawyers can. Lawyers, in most jurisdictions, can have sex with their clients without violating a standard of professional responsibility.

Sex between lawyers and clients occurs far more frequently than many believe. In a 1993 nationwide survey of attorneys, 18.9% of the respondents had sex with a client or knew of at least one other attorney who had. Despite this figure, there are only a handful of cases where attorneys have been disciplined for having sex with their clients. The reported …

A Six-Three Rule: Reviving Consensus And Deference On The Supreme Court, Jed Handelsman Shugerman

Faculty Scholarship

Over the past three decades, the Supreme Court has struck down federal statutes by a bare majority with unprecedented frequency. This Article shows that five-four decisions regularly overturning acts of Congress are a relatively recent phenomenon, whereas earlier Courts generally exercised judicial review by supermajority voting.

One option is to establish the following rule: The Supreme Court may not declare an act of Congress unconstitutional without a two-thirds majority. The Supreme Court itself could establish this rule internally, just as it has created its nonmajority rules for granting certiorari and holds, or one Justice who would otherwise be the fifth …

I Don't Have Time To Be Ethical: Addressing The Effects Of Billable Hour Pressure, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article discusses the unintended consequences of the billable hour derby and suggests changes to address the deleterious effects of increasing billable hour requirements. A brief introduction identifies law firms’ recent tendency to increase the billable hour requirements to fund the heightened salaries of associates. This article analyzes the results from an empirical study focused on the effects of billable hour expectations and firm cultures. Part I generally reviews the study findings. Part II discusses the work and report of the ABA Commission, while Part III indentifies those issues and approaches that the ABA and firm managers should explore. Recognizing …

Evidence And The One-Liner: A Beginning Evidence Professor’S Exploration Of The Use Of Humor In The Law School Classroom, John J. Capowski

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Clinical Teaching At William Mitchell College Of Law: Values, Pedagogy, And Perspective, Eric S. Janus

Faculty Scholarship

A retrospective celebrating thirty years of clinical education at William Mitchell College of Law. These courses are nurtured by the key principles that have shaped clinical education at William Mitchell. They embrace the profession of law, but insist on a critical stance. They recognize that values define the practice of law, and that only through intentional choice of pedagogy and perspective can values education be effective and respectful of the autonomy of our students as they work to define the sort of lawyers they wish to become.

What Clients Want, What Lawyers Need., Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Legacy Of Buckley V. Valeo, Joel Gora

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Domestic Violence In Legal Education And Legal Practice: A Dialogue Between Professors And Practitioners, Stacy Caplow

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Problem Solving In A Multidisciplinary Environment: Must Ethics Get In The Way Of Holistic Service, J. Michael Norwood

Faculty Scholarship

Authored with Alan Paterson. The article analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of delivering legal services as a part of a multidisciplinary practice (MDP). The analysis considers multidisciplinary practices from the perspectives of clients served, lawyers, the legal profession, and the general public, but emphasizes the quality of the relationships amongst the legal and nonlegal professionals involved in the MDP. While sounding a cautionary note about the need to preserve core ethical and professional values when implementing a MDP, the article seeks a balance among the common, and sometimes competing interests, of the public, the legal profession, and society whereby it …

Introduction Welcome And Opening Remarks: Panel One: Introduction, Tanya K. Hernandez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.