Law Commons^™

Perspectives Of A New Executive Director, William H. Henning

Faculty Scholarship

Article Extract:

It goes without saying that a national economy cannot function efficiently without a core set of commercial laws to provide a stable base. Can you imagine the added costs of doing business if common transactions were governed by truly idiosyncratic laws in the various states? We had just such a situation in secured-finance law before the widespread adoption of Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Creditors seeking to use personal property as security faced a bewildering array of devices-pledge, chattel mortgage, conditional sale, assignment of accounts receivable, trust receipt, equipment trust, factor's lien, etc. Some of the …

Fortifying A Law Firm's Ethical Infrastructure: Avoiding Legal Malpractice Claims Based On Conflicts Of Interest, Susan Saab Fortney, Jett Hanna

Faculty Scholarship

This article addresses the prevailing problem of malpractice claims based on conflicts of interest. Part I of this article introduces the topic by underscoring the seriousness of all conflicts of interest and recommending preventative action. Part II describes measures that law firms can take to detect and manage conflicts and analyzes the effect of the firm’s ability to avoid conflicts claims on a firm’s ethical infrastructure. Part III focuses on some of the most common conflicts situations that result in malpractice claims and sanctions. The discussion includes selected conflicts cases that illustrate problems and patterns. Part IV concludes by urging …

The Lawyer As Citizen, James E. Fleming

Faculty Scholarship

The moral schizophrenia of the lawyer-person wrought by the American adversarial system's differentiation of professional morality from personal morality is at once alienating and anesthetizing. Alienating in that it separates a person from her/his actions taken in performing a professional role by attributing responsibility for these actions and their consequences to the role itself rather than to the individual. Anesthetizing in that it permits if not requires a professional to constrict the moral universe inhabited on the job, extruding moral sentiments that she/he otherwise might feel, numbing the moral sense of ordinary personal responsibility.

Cognitive Legal Studies: Categorization And Imagination In The Mind Of Law--Introduction, Lawrence M. Solan

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Toward A Statistical Profile Of Latina/Os In The Legal Profession, Leo P. Martinez

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ethics Counsel's Role In Combating The "Ostrich" Tendency, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article focuses on ethics problems related to hourly billing by analyzing the results of a survey of 1000 randomly selected associates in Texas firms who (1) had been licensed for ten or fewer years as of June 1999, and (2) worked in private law firms with more than ten attorneys (the Associate Survey). This article addresses the need for firm managers to clarify how and what their attorneys should bill. The article reports the results from the Associate Survey relating to billing guidance and ethics systems. From the empirical data, the article identifies a need for supervising attorneys to …

Challenging A Tradition Of Exclusion: The History Of An Unheard Story At Harvard Law School, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

In a series of lectures at Harvard University, Professors Lani Guinier and Gerald Torres posited that people of color are the "miner's canary" in American society. Guinier and Torres argue that pursuing color blindness policies is dangerous because it ignores racial differences that affect every aspect of our society. According to Guinier and Torres, like the miner's canary that uses a call of distress to warn the miner of the hazardous atmosphere in the mine, the critiques people of color offer our institutions are warning signals to alert us to the presence of more systemic problems. Instead of relegating the …

An Empirical Study Of Associate Satisfaction, Law Firm Culture, And The Effects Of Billable Hour Requirements - Part Two, Susan Saab Fortney

Faculty Scholarship

This article considers billing practices, the effects of hourly billing pressure, and firm culture as reflected in a survey of associates in Texas law firms. Part I of this article reports the empirical information from the survey. This information includes insight into the toll an increase in billable hour requirements has taken on legal practitioners and the consequent affect on the legal field. Part II discusses what the data means and how it might be used to improve the outlook for attracting and retaining good associates.

Negotiations Goes To War, Charles J. Dunlap Jr., Paula B. Mccarron

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Legal Ethics Must Be The Heart Of The Law School Curriculum Symposium: Recommitting To Teaching Legal Ethics- Shaping Our Teaching In A Changing World, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

Despite what seems to be far greater attention paid to the teaching of legal ethics than to any other law school subject, legal ethics remains no better than a second class subject in the eyes of students and faculty. This essay suggests that all efforts at innovation in legal ethics teaching are doomed to a marginal impact at best. Only recognition that legal ethics is the most important subject in the law school curriculum will lead to real and significant changes in the teaching of legal ethics. If the commitment of the legal profession and of legal academia to producing …

Maccrate's Missed Opportunity: The Maccrate Report's Failure To Advance Professional Values Symposium, Russell G. Pearce

Faculty Scholarship

The 1992 Report of the Task Force on Law Schools and the Profession: Narrowing the Gap (the "Task Force"), Legal Education Professional Development - An Educational Continuum, popularly known as the MacCrate Report (the "Report"), was the most ambitious effort to reform legal education in the past generation. Some commentators have described the Report as "the greatest proposed paradigm shift in legal education since Langdell envisioned legal education as the pursuit of legal science through the case method in the late 19th century.” Although the Report sought to promote education in both lawyering skills and values, its major influence has …

Lawyers, Non-Lawyers And Mediation: Rethinking The Professional Monopoly From A Problem-Solving Perspective , Jacqueline Nolan-Haley

Faculty Scholarship

Mediation is a big business today that is practiced by lawyers and non-lawyers, and is closely related to the business of law. Lawyers have a long-standing monopoly on the law business and do not look favorably on sharing their power with nonlawyers. This phenomenon is odd because it occurs at the same time that the legal profession is beginning to embrace a new ethic of problem-solving that honors the values of collaboration and power-sharing among professionals in multiple disciplines. Lawyers protect their professional monopoly through the unauthorized practice of law ("UPL") doctrine that limits the practice of law to licensed …

Lawyers And The Practice Of Workplace Equity, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

Lawyers involved in the pursuit of workplace equity are difficult to pigeon-hole. Of course, the practice of many employment lawyers conforms to conventional understandings of lawyers' roles. These lawyers litigate cases on behalf of management or employees, advise clients about their legal rights and obligations, and define their mission as avoiding liability or winning battles in court.But innovators have crafted interesting and dynamic roles that transcend the traditional paradigm. These innovators connect law, as it is traditionally understood, to the resolution of the underlying problems that create and maintain workplace inequity. Civil rights lawyers working in both public and private …

"When Smoke Gets In Your Eyes": Myth And Reality About The Synthesis Of Private Counsel And Public Client, John C. Coffee Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

A recurring fallacy in any debate over legal ethics or public policy is to assume that the particular problem under examination is unique and unprecedented. Expand one's field of vision, and precedents and analogs quickly turn up. This rule applies with special force to the debate over retention by state attorneys general of private counsel to represent them on a contingent fee basis in the recent litigation against the tobacco industry. Because this litigation produced a highly successful outcome, while most private litigation against the tobacco industry has not, some are led to the conclusion that this combination of private …

Should I Have Learned To Cook? Interviews With Women Lawyers Juggling Multiple Roles, Jackie Slotkin

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Constructing The Practices Of Accountability And Professionalism: A Comment On In The Interests Of Justice, Susan Sturm

Faculty Scholarship

In the Interests of Justice: Reforming the Legal Profession lives up to its ambitious title. Deborah Rhode comprehensively surveys the structural problems confronting the legal profession, from its subscription to the "sporting theory of justice" to its preoccupation with profit. The book also lays bare the failure of legal education and the professional regulatory system to confront the roots of these structural problems.

I must confess that reading the book felt like a whirlwind tour of the legal profession's inevitable problems. In part, this perception grew out of the sheer range of economic, institutional, and structural factors contributing to the …