Law Commons^™

Unbelievable: How Narrative Can Help Vulnerable Narrators Overcome Perceived Unreliability In The Legal System, Cathren Page

Articles

This article examines how advocates can champion vulnerable narrators’ truths. First, advocates must prime the audience by educating the audience about the ways the vulnerability manifests; this process helps to allay credibility questions. Second, advocates must reframe seemingly untrustworthy behavior by showing how the behavior is consistent with someone in the vulnerable narrator’s situation. Third, advocates must create what fiction writers call verisimilitude—a sense of reality—by including concrete details that logically fit together in the legal narrative. Finally, advocates must label the tactics commonly used to discredit vulnerable narrators so that the audience can see those tactics for what they …

To Outgrow A Mockingbird: Confronting Our History—As Well As Our Fictions—About Indigent Defense In The Deep South, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

To Kill a Mockingbird occupies a beloved space in law school classrooms and curricula, especially in its portrayal of Atticus Finch. Frequently held up as the model or “hero-lawyer,” Atticus’s character is powerful in fiction, but problematic in practice. His work is lauded, rather than scrutinized, despite his questionable ability to represent his client in life-or-death circumstances—specifically, a racially charged sexual assault case in the Deep South. Through considering examples of historical lawyers and texts which explore similar themes without the lens of fiction, those engaged in legal education and legal practice can and should look to others to study …

What American Legal Education Can Learn From The 'Harry Potter' Series, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

Both legal education and a Hogwarts magical education involve a new way of seeing the world—an immersive and intense process requiring, in many ways, a transformation. Students need a new wardrobe for both law school and wizarding school—and an awful lot of puzzling and expensive textbooks. Both Hogwarts and law school have been accused of operating entirely apart from reality. One of these criticisms may be valid. ...

This lighthearted comparison to the Harry Potter stories can perhaps join other voices to help make a serious and important case for practical legal education. There are few principled reasons for not …

Telling Tales The Transactional Lawyer As Storyteller, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles

Transactional lawyers are storytellers, although they may not think of themselves as such. They work with provisions and clauses to build trans-actional documents that encapsulate the wishes, hopes, and fears of the transacting parties to promote, guide, and control the relationship of those parties. Narratology, the theory of narrative, can provide a resource to transactional lawyers that facilitates the construction of a wide range of transactional documents, which can themselves be considered narratives.

The form documents that transactional lawyers use as starting points in the drafting process are already rife with narrative characteristics; they are embedded with characters and plots, …

Learning From Clergy Education: Externships Through The Lens Of Formation, Daisy Hurst Floyd, Timothy Floyd, Sarah Gerwig-Moore

Articles

Educating Lawyers, the 2007 Carnegie Foundation study of legal education, challenges law schools to become more intentional about educating students for formation of professional identity. Noting that clergy education has focused more on the formative aspects of professional education than have other professional schools, the study suggests that legal educators could learn a great deal from clergy education about teaching for professional identity formation. Taking that suggestion to heart, the authors undertook an examination of clergy education, with a particular focus on the role of field education in students’ personal and professional formation. This article reports on that examination …

The Internet Changes Everything: Revolutionizing Public Participation And Access To Government Information Through The Internet, Stephen M. Johnson

Articles

The internet holds great promise when agencies affirmatively use it to solicit public in- put during initial policy development in either notice and comment rule- making, or in the initial development of interpretive rules, guidelines, or policies. The Clinton administration has embraced such a vision. Many federal agencies actively use the Internet to disseminate government information and solicit public input on important policy matters. This Article explores the manner in which the Internet and similar technological innovations can be, and are being, used to expand public access to government information and to increase public participation in all forms of agency …