Law Commons^™

Is Now A(Nother) Teachable Moment Honoring The Memory Of Dr. William S. Spriggs, Francine J. Lipman

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No abstract provided.

Challenges And Rewards Of Educating First Generation Law Students, Lori D. Johnson

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No abstract provided.

Generative Ai And The Future Of Legal Education, Joseph Regalia

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No abstract provided.

Government Lawyers May Be Prime Candidates For College And University Presidencies, Patricia E. Salkin

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With roughly 4,000 institutions of higher education in the United States, there is a body of literature on leadership in higher education and presidents have been studies and critiqued by biographers and by scholars, yet up until now there has been scarce attention to the documented trend of lawyers leading higher education. Within the subset of lawyer presidents, one major commonality is government law experience in their career prior to the campus presidency. This article explores the unique skills and leadership that government lawyers can offer colleges and universities and provides examples of presidents with former government experience at all …

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

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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 …

Promoting Technological Competency Through Microlearning And Incentivization, Eliza Boles

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No abstract provided.

Ethical Implications Of Law Practice Technology, Eliza Boles

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The following CLE materials were prepared by Eliza Boles for presentation on December 6, 2022. Materials were approved by the Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education for two hours of mandated ethics credit.

Moving Toward A Competency Based Model For Fostering Law Students’ Relational Skills, Susan L. Brooks, Marjorie A. Silver, Sarah Fishel, Kellie Wiltsie

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Legal education has long been criticized for failing to provide adequate professional training to prepare graduates for legal practice realities. Many sources have lamented the lack of sufficient attention to the range of competencies necessary for law graduates to be effective practitioners and develop a positive professional identity, including those that are intra-personal, such as self-awareness, critical self-reflection, and self-directedness; those that are interpersonal, such as deep and reflective listening, empathy, compassion, cross-cultural communication, and dialogue; and those that engage with the social/systemic dimension of lawyering, such as appreciating the role of multiple identities, implicit bias, privilege and power, and …

Reflections On A Crit Clinic, Elizabeth L. Macdowell, Nina L. Terzian

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No abstract provided.

Introducing Students To Ethics And Professionalism Challenges In Virtual Communication, Carol Morgan, Katherine M. Koops, James E. Moliterno, Carol Newman

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As the practice of law, and the conduct of business generally, focuses increasingly on virtual communication, the ethics and professionalism challenges inherent in email, videoconference, text, and telephone communication continue to evolve. These challenges are particularly prevalent in transactional practice, which involves frequent communication with a variety of parties through a variety of communication channels. Exposing law students to these challenges through exercises and simulations contributes to the continued development of their professional identity as lawyers.

This article presents a variety of exercises that introduce students to client confidentiality, inadvertent disclosure, and other ethical issues that often arise in the …

The Lawyers Justice Corps: A Licensing Pathway To Enhance Access To Justice, Eileen Kaufman

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The idea for establishing a Lawyers Justice Corps emerged out of efforts to solve a problem: how to license lawyers at a time when COVID-19 had expanded the need for new lawyers while also making an in-person bar exam dangerous, if not impossible. We-the Collaboratory on Legal Education and Licensing for Practice'-proposed the Lawyers Justice Corps to provide a different and better way of certifying minimum competence for new attorneys while at the same time helping to create a new generation of lawyers equipped to address a wide range of social justice, racial justice, and criminal justice issues. When implemented, …

The Struggle With Basic Writing Skills, Ann Nowak

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No abstract provided.

A Merritt-Orious Path For Lawyer Licensing, Eileen Kaufman, Carol L. Chomsky, Andrea Anne Curcio

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More than two decades ago, Professor Deborah Merritt turned her attention to responding to the then-proliferating efforts to raise state passing scores for the bar examination. Writing with Lowell Hargens and Barbara Reskin, two professors of sociology, Professor Merritt challenged the methodology of the studies that purported to show the need to “raise the bar.” In the process, she presciently raised broader concerns about the validity of the bar exam to assess lawyer competence and the impact of the bar exam on the diversity of the legal profession. In the years since, Professor Merritt has continued to critique the bar …

The Legal Industry's Second Chance To Get It Right, Nancy B. Rapoport, Joseph R. Tiano Jr.

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No abstract provided.

The Specter Of Malpractice: When Law Firm General Counsel And Risk Management Professionals Are Confronted With Potential Malpractice Claims And Ethics Violations, Joseph R. Tiano Jr., Nancy B. Rapoport, William J. Siroky

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Every day, law firm general counsel and other law firm risk management professionals face a very practical, very vexing problem. The problem is what to do when hearing that a serious ethical mistake or impropriety may have occurred—but without any concrete confirmation that something problematic has, in fact, happened. This essay discusses the most important initial steps and questions that the firm’s general counsel or other risk management professional must address in this confounding situation where the “specter of malpractice” is present. We call this the “specter of malpractice” because a malpractice claim has not yet fully materialized (and it …

“Portability Of The Ube: Where Is It When You Need It And Do You Need It At All?”, Suzanne Darrow- Kleinhaus

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No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Professor Catherine Mahern, Lawrence Raful

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No abstract provided.

The Deborah Jones Merritt Center For The Advancement Of Justice, Claudia Angelos, Mary Lu Bilek, Joan W. Howarth

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When invited to write an essay on clinical legal education honoring our friend, we were struck by the importance of a focus on clinical legal education in any collection of work paying tribute to Professor Deborah Jones Merritt. Legal education has benefited from a fifty-year movement for clinical education. This movement necessarily interrogates and seeks to overcome the anachronistic, inherited Langdellian paradigm that dominates and continues to define the curricula and policies of our law schools. But the movement for clinical education has been exponentially confounded by contemporary legal education’s shape as a pyramid of statuses and privileges accumulated over …

The Bar Exam And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Need For Immediate Action, Patricia E. Salkin, Eileen Kaufman, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Andrea A. Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Deborah Jones Merritt, Judith Welch Wegner

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The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted life in the United States. Schools and universities have closed throughout much of the country. Businesses have shuttered, and employees are working from home whenever possible. Cities and states are announcing lockdowns in which citizens may leave their homes only for vital errands or exercise.

Medical experts advise that at least some of these restraints will continue for 18 months or more—until a vaccine is developed, tested, and administered widely. It is possible that localities will be able to lift some of these restrictions (such as lockdowns and school closures) intermittently during those …

Access Law Schools & Diversifying The Profession, Deseriee A. Kennedy

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Lawyers do not reflect the racial diversity in the United States. The legal profession continues to struggle with ways to achieve and maintain racial diversity. Law schools play a critical role in the path to practice, and therefore an examination of the barriers to the profession they created is warranted. This essay critiques the over-reliance on standardized testing in law school admissions and advocates for an open admissions process that prioritizes racial and academic diversity. It suggests that the benefits of minimizing the role of standardized tests far outweigh any perceived costs in legal education. This essay concludes that the …

The Bar Exam And The Covid-19 Pandemic: The Need For Immediate Action, Claudia Angelos, Sara Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol M. Chomsky, Andrea Anne Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen R. Kaufman, Deborah Jones Merritt, Patricia Salkin, Judith W. Wegner

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The novel coronavirus COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted life in the United States. Among other challenges, jurisdictions are unlikely to be able to administer the July 2020 bar exam in the usual manner. It is essential, however, to continue licensing new lawyers. Those lawyers are necessary to meet current needs in the legal system. Equally important, the demand for legal services will skyrocket during and after this pandemic. We cannot close doors to the profession at a time when client demand will reach an all-time high.

In this brief policy paper, we outline six licensing options for jurisdictions to consider for …

The Professional Responsibility Case For Valid And Nondiscriminatory Bar Exams, Joan W. Howarth

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Title VII protects against workplace discrimination in part through the scrutiny of employment tests whose results differ based on race, gender, or ethnicity. Such tests are said to have a disparate impact, and their use is illegal unless their validity can be established. Validity means that the test is job-related and measures what it purports to measure. Further, under Title VII, even a valid employment test with a disparate impact could be struck down if less discriminatory alternatives exist.

Licensing tests, including bar exams, have been found to be outside these Title VII protections. But the nondiscrimination values that animate …

Training Law Students To Maintain Civility In Their Law Practices As A Way To Improve Public Discourse, Nancy B. Rapoport

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Our current social discourse is broken. Not only have we resorted to name-calling instead of reasoned discussion, but we have also resorted to the fundamental attribution error: we attribute bad motives to people with whose positions we disagree rather than starting with the presumption that, perhaps, buried deep within their positions could be a grain of truth. As Yoni Appelbaum observed in a recent article in The Atlantic, "Recent research by political scientists at Vanderbilt University and other institutions has found both Republicans and Democrats distressingly willing to dehumanize members of the opposite party."' We need to find a …

#Metoo Backlash Or Simply Common Sense?: It's Complicated, Ann C. Mcginley

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This Essay focuses on the skittishness that men express about being accused of sexual harassment. Part II explains the prevalence of sexual harassment and the response to this problem, giving both empirical and anecdotal evidence of male professionals' refusals to spend time with female subordinates. Part III discusses the already-present inequalities in the legal profession, particularly in law firms and raises concerns about how lack of mentoring and sponsorship of women by male supervisors could create an even greater disparity. Part IV analyzes the disparate legal, business, and cultural definitions of sexual harassment, and given the disparities in understandings, raises …

Navigating Technology Competence In Transactional Practice, Lori D. Johnson

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In 2012, the American Bar Association House of Delegates, based on the work of the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20, amended the Model Rules of Professional Conduct (Model Rules) to include a new requirement concerning lawyer competence. The obligation, enacted as Comment 8 to existing Model Rule 1.1 (outlining a lawyer's requisite competence) (Rule 1.1), requires lawyers "keep abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology." To date, Comment 8 to Rule 1.1 (Comment 8 or the Comment) has been adopted in thirty-eight states, and has begun generating scholarship and …

Diploma Privilege And The Constitution, Claudia Angelos, Sara Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol M. Chomsky, Andrea Anne Curcio, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen R. Kaufman, Deborah Jones Merritt, Patricia Salkin, Judith W. Wegner

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The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting shutdowns are affecting every aspect of society. The legal profession and the justice system have been profoundly disrupted at precisely the time when there is an unprecedented need for legal services to deal with a host of legal issues generated by the pandemic, including disaster relief, health law, insurance, labor law, criminal justice, domestic violence, and civil rights. The need for lawyers to address these issues is great but the prospect of licensing new lawyers is challenging due to the serious health consequences of administering the bar examination during the pandemic.

State Supreme Courts are …

Legal Ethics And Law Reform Advocacy, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Social activism, particularly law reform, has long been an accepted, even revered part of the lawyer's identity. However, modern developments such as nation-wide firms, the economic importance of client development, and aggressive attempts by clients to deploy attorneys as de facto, undisclosed lobbyists have put substantial pressure on the traditional vision of the attorney as a "lawyer-statesman" or someone who "checks clients at the door" when participating in law reform activities. Furthermore, law reform activism on behalf of one client (or prospective client when attorneys use their law reform lobbying as part of their marketing strategy) poses a real danger …

Using Data Analytics To Predict An Individual Lawyer's Legal Malpractice Risk Profile: Becoming An Lpl "Precog", Nancy B. Rapoport, Joseph R. Tiano Jr.

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The power of data analytics is revolutionizing the way that business is conducted in nearly every industry. The medical industry, the consumer/retail space, and the banking and financial industries are taking their business operations to the next level by leveraging the power of big data. Despite radical transformations in nearly every other aspect of the legal industry, though, the approach to preventing, predicting, assessing, and resolving malpractice claims hasn't really changed. Malpractice insurers and their law firm clients continue to take an old-fashioned approach when it comes to legal professional liability. Unlike the insurers pricing automobile policies, the vast opportunity …

Rebooting Empathy For The Digital Generation Lawyer, Lauren A. Newell

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No abstract provided.

What Law Must Lawyers Know?, Joan W. Howarth

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What constitutes the body of legal knowledge that every lawyer must
possess? I used to know, or think I did, but no longer. I suspect no one else
knows either. This difficult question is not just an intriguing theoretical
matter but also an urgent, practical problem. Licensing regulators assume
that minimal competence in any profession requires certain fundamental
knowledge, skills, and abilities.Bar examiners must determine what
knowledge, skills, and abilities are necessary for minimum competence as
an attorney and then design tests and other requirements to attempt to align
licensure with minimum competence. Today’s tangled attorney licensing
puzzle cannot be …