Law Commons^™

Deconstructing Los Angeles Or A Secret Fax From Magritte Regarding Postliterate Legal Reasoning: A Critique Of Legal Education, C. Garrison Lepow

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article asks readers to imagine the shapes and colors of legal issues; it examines how people communicate and develop ideas through moving, metamorphosing images, especially computer graphics, and why methodology affects the eventual product of thought. Like dance, legal issues are described better through action than through words. Therefore, this Article challenges the principles of verbal reasoning upon which our legal system is based.

The Growing Disjunction Between Legal Education And The Legal Profession, Harry T. Edwards

Michigan Law Review

This article is my response to Professor Priest and all other legal academicians who disdain law teaching as an endeavor in pursuit of professional education. My view is that if law schools continue to stray from their principal mission of professional scholarship and training, the disjunction between legal education and the legal profession will grow and society will be the worse for it. My arguments are quite straightforward, and probably not wholly original. Nevertheless, they surely merit repetition.

Three Attorney Fee-Shifting Rules And Contingency Fees: Their Impact On Settlement Incentives, Bradley L. Smith

Michigan Law Review

This Note seeks to predict the direction and magnitude of the change in settlement frequency under the three fee-shifting rules: American, British, and the British rule as modified by the PCC. Part I analyzes the proposed rule using the theoretical model of litigation and settlement developed by Hause. Part II examines the impact of fee-shifting when the plaintiff's lawyer receives reimbursement via a contingency fee. Analysis of indemnification in a contingency fee context raises several policy issues which section II.A addresses. Section II.B discusses the terms and assumptions made in adjusting Hause's model to reflect the standard contingency fee arrangement, …

Law's Paradise Lost?, Douglas H. Ginsburg

Michigan Law Review

A Review of The Litigation Explosion: What Happened When America Unleashed the Lawsuit by Walter K. Olson

Speaking Differences: The Rules And Relationships Of Litigants' Discourses, Naomi R. Cahn

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Rules Versus Relationships: The Ethnography of Legal Discourse by John M. Conley and William M. O'Barr

An Academic Visit To The Modern Law Firm: Considering A Theory Of Promotion-Driven Growth, Frederick W. Lambert

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Tournament of Lawyers: The Transformation of the Big Law Firm by Marc Galanter and Thomas Palay

Accommodation And Satisfaction: Women And Men Lawyers And The Balance Of Work And Family, David L. Chambers

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

This article by Professor Chambers began with data from the periodic surveys of Law School alumni he has conducted. It is adapted from an article Professor Chambers published in the journal Law and Social Inquiry.

Women first entered the legal profession in large numbers in the 1970s. The same movement that brought them into the profession also sought to deliver messages to men that they ought to participate more in the raising of children. How, over the years that have followed, have men and women lawyers responded to the multiple roles of home and work? How satisfied are they with …

Tax Policy And Panda Bears, Douglas A. Kahn, Jeffrey S. Lehman

Law Quadrangle (formerly Law Quad Notes)

In this article, Professors Kahn and Lehman argue that the concept of tax expenditures is flawed as a tool for measuring the propriety of tax provisions. It assumes the existence of one true and correct standard of dederal income taxation that applies to all circumstances. To make that assumption, the proponents of the concept implicitly make a particular moral claim about the relative importance of a wide range of values, including efficiency, consumption/savings neutrality, privacy, distributional equity, administrability, charity, and pragmatism. They then measure a tax provision's "normalcy"exclusively by how it conforms to their Platonic concept of income.

Professors Kahn …

Class Of 1992 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.

Class Of 1992 Five Year Report Alumni Comments, University Of Michigan Law School

UMLS Alumni Survey Class Reports

This addendum is a compilation of alumni responses to the open-ended comments sections.

On Retiring From A Deanship, John W. Reed

Other Publications

The reason for the italicized "from" in the title of my remarks is to distinguish it from the comments that I made at our meeting in Tucson four years ago, under the title "On Retiring to a Deanship." For those of you who were not there, I should mention that five years ago, as I was about to reach retirement age at the University of Michigan Law School-what the late William L. Prosser used to call the age of mandatory senility-Wayne State University in Detroit asked me to serve as its dean for a term of five years. Lobbied by …

Identifying The Best Interests Of The Child In Protection Proceedings: Nine Guidelines For The Child Advocate., Donald N. Duquette

Articles

Increasingly, judges appoint court appointed special advocates (CASAs) to represent children in child abuse and neglect proceedings. Like lawyers, CASAs are charged with looking out for the "best interests" of the child. Unfortunately, although the phrase "best interests" sounds noble, it provides little practical guidance for the child advocate.

Translation As A Mode Of Thought, James Boyd White

Articles

I think that Clark Cunningham's article, The Lawyer as Translator, is a wonderful piece of work, full of life and interest and originality. I especially admire: his ability to make vivid to the reader the ways in which languages do truly differ, and differ beyond our efforts to bridge them-as he shows when he imagines an attempt to translate our most common professional terms into Chinese; his recoguition of the kind of force that our languages have over our minds, both as we see the world and as we tell stories about it; his sense that what we think of …

Discretion And Rules: A Lawyer's View, Carl E. Scheider

Book Chapters

In modern society the law regulates the complex behavior of millions of people. To do this efficiently-to do this at all-broadly applicable rules must be used. Yet such rules are bound to be incomplete, to be ambiguous, to fail in some cases, to be unfair in others. Some of the drawbacks of rules can be minimized by giving discretion to the administrators and judges who apply them. Yet doing so dilutes the advantages of rules and creates the risk that discretion may be abused. Working out the proper balance of these considerations is both necessary and perplexing in every area …

Evidentiary Rules And Rulings: The Role Of Treatises, Richard D. Friedman

Articles

I have devoted large gobs of time to work on a multi-author treatise on the law of evidence.' And before even one volume is published, I will devote further multiple gobs of time to the project-which, perhaps audaciously and perhaps merely foolishly, but with heredity and precedent on our side,2 we are calling The New Wigmore. Accordingly, I found the question posed by this symposium-Does Evidence Law Matter?-rather disquieting. If it is doubtful even whether the law of evidence matters, then how much can a treatise on the law of evidence matter, and how worthwhile can such a work be? …

The Burdens Of Educational Loans: The Impacts Of Debt On Job Choice And Standards Of Living For Students At Nine American Law Schools, David L. Chambers

Articles

American law students are borrowing large sums of money. For graduates at many schools, cumulative debts of $40,000 from college and law school have become the norm, and debts of $50,000, $60,000, and even more are common. The sums students are borrowing are much larger today than they were ten years ago, even after adjusting for increases in the cost of living. They have risen at a considerably faster pace than the starting salaries at small law firms and government agencies. They have even risen at a faster pace than the starting salaries in many large firms. The new pattern …