Law Commons^™

Admitting Foreign-Trained Lawyers In States Other Than New York: Why It Matters, Laurel S. Terry

Laurel S. Terry

The Monopoly Myth And Other Tales About The Superiority Of Lawyers, Leslie C. Levin

Leslie C. Levin

The legal profession’s control of much of the market for legal services is justified by the claim that only licensed lawyers can effectively and ethically represent clients. This article challenges that claim. A review of a number of studies suggests that experienced nonlawyers can provide competent legal services in certain contexts and in some cases, can seemingly do so as effectively as lawyers. There is also little evidence that lawyers’ legal training, the bar admission requirements, or lawyers’ psychological characteristics make them more trustworthy than nonlawyer legal services providers. The article considers some recent initiatives, such as Washington’s approval of …

The Folly Of Expecting Evil: Reconsidering The Bar's Character And Fitness Requirement, Leslie Levin

Leslie C. Levin

The bar’s character and fitness inquiry seeks to protect the public. As part of this inquiry, bar applicants are required to produce detailed information about their past histories. The rationale for this inquiry is that this information can be used to identify who will subsequently become a problematic lawyer. Bar applicants bear the burden of providing their “good” character even though there is little evidence that past conduct predicts who will become a problematic lawyer. This article looks at psychological and other research that attempt to identify factors that might predict future misconduct in the work place. It also reports …

Self-Interest And Sinecure: Why Law School Can’T Be “Fixed” From Within, David Barnhizer

David Barnhizer

The issue of how best to do a legal education is being approached as if it were an intellectual and pedagogical question. Of course in a conceptual sense it is. But from a political and human perspective (law faculty, deans and lawyers) it is a self-interested situation in terms of how does this affect me? The reality is that for law faculty and deans it is mainly a life style, status, economic benefit and political situation in which the various interests protected by the traditional faculty slot placeholders [as well as the non-traditional practice-oriented teachers) are being masked by self-serving …