Law Commons^™

New York’S Professor John R. Nolon: A National Leader In Land Use Law With A Large Impact Across The Hudson Valley And The State Of New York, Patricia E. Salkin, Samuel Stewart

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As Professor John R. Nolon steps down from active law teaching, this article reflects not only on his contributions as a national thought leader in the field, but also on how he has a hand in changing the land use and conservation patterns in New York while promoting affordable housing and combating discrimination.

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

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No abstract provided.

Cocurricular Learning In Management Education: Lessons From Legal Education’S Use Of Student-Edited Journals, Matthew I. Hall, Matt Theeke

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In this essay, we draw on insights from U.S. legal education’s century-long experiment using student-edited journals as a cocurricular learning tool, to develop the argument that management education should consider introducing a new category of student-edited, practitioner-oriented journals. Student-edited journals are potentially well-suited for management education because they encourage students to learn professionally relevant skills and to develop a greater understanding of research and its role in professional education. Enlisting students to help edit practitioner journals could also benefit business professionals by increasing the availability of practitioner-oriented research. In doing so, management education can use this cocurricular learning activity to …

Tributes To Family Law Scholars Who Helped Us Find Our Path, Thomas Oldham, Paul M. Kurtz

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At some point after the virus struck, I had the idea that it would be appropriate and interesting to ask a number of experienced family law teachers to write a tribute about a more senior family law scholar whose work inspired them when they were beginning their careers. I mentioned this idea to some other long-term members of the professoriate, and they agreed that this could be a good project. So I reached out to some colleagues and asked them to participate. Many agreed to join the team. Some suggested other potential contributors, and some of these suggested faculty members …

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, …

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 …

The Struggle With Basic Writing Skills, Ann Nowak

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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 …

Justice Ginsburg, Civil Procedure Professor And Champion Of Judicial Federalism, Rodger D. Citron

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No abstract provided.

“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.

Maybe Law Schools Do Not Oppress Minority Faculty Women: A Critique Of Meera E. Deo’S “Unequal Profession: Race And Gender In Legal Academia” (Stanford University Press 2019), Dan Subotnik

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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 …

Nine Ways Of Looking At Oklahoma City: An Essay On Sam Anderson’S Boom Town, Rodger D. Citron

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No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Professor Catherine Mahern, Lawrence Raful

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No abstract provided.

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 …

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 …

Shouting Into The Wind: How The Aba Standards Promote Inequality In Legal Education, And What Law Students And Faculty Should Do About It, Mary Beth Beazley

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This Article will analyze how we might return ABA Standard 405(b) to its appropriate role as a protector of equitable treatment of full-time law faculty. First, it will analyze some of the reasons that full-time legal writing and clinical faculty are treated differently; second, it will explain how the current system hurts equality, particularly gender equality; third, it will examine how these inequalities hurt the next generation of lawyers; fourth, it will describe how the inequalities hurt the supposed goals of legal education; and finally, it will suggest what law faculty, the ABA and AALS, and law students can do …

Diploma Privilege And The Constitution, Patricia E. Salkin, Claudia Angelos, Sara J. Berman, Mary Lu Bilek, Carol L. Chomsky, Marsha Griggs, Joan W. Howarth, Eileen Kaufman, Deborah Jones Meritt, Judith Wegner, Andrea Curcio

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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 …

Teaching With Feminist Judgments: A Global Conversation, Bridget J. Crawford, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Linda L. Berger

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This conversational-style essay is an exchange among fourteen professors-representing thirteen universities across five countries-with experience teaching with feminist judgments.

Feminist judgments are 'shadow' court decisions rewritten from a feminist perspective, using only the precedent in effect and the facts known at the time of the original decision. Scholars in Canada, England, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, Ireland, India, and Mexico have published (or are currently producing) written collections of feminist judgments that demonstrate how feminist perspectives could have changed the legal reasoning or outcome (or both) in important legal cases.

This essay begins to explore the vast pedagogical potential …

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 …

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 …

Learning From Feminist Judgments: Lessons In Language And Advocacy, Linda L. Berger, Kathryn M. Stanchi, Bridget J. Crawford

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Judicial decision-making is not a neutral and logical enterprise that involves applying clear rules to agreed-upon facts. Legal educators can and should help students learn more about how judges actually go about making their decisions. The study of re-imagined judicial decisions, such as the alternative judgments from various Feminist Judgments Projects, can enrich the study of law in multiple ways. First, seeing a written decision that differs from the original can help students think “outside the box” constructed by the original opinion by showing them a concrete example of another perspective written in judicial language. Second, the rewritten judgments show …

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 …

Access To The Civil Court System For Survivors Of Child Sexual Abuse In Georgia: Observations And Recommendations From The Clinical Legal Education Experience, Emma M. Hetherington, Michael Nunnally

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Founded in January 2016, the Wilbanks Child Endangerment and Sexual Exploitation Clinic (the CEASE Clinic) represents survivors of child sexual abuse in juvenile court dependency matters and civil litigation and is the first of its kind in the nation. The CEASE Clinic was established through a generous donation by Georgia Law alumnus Marlan Wilbanks (JD ‘84) in response to a new Georgia law known as the Hidden Predator Act (the HPA) that went into effect on July 1, 2015. The HPA extended the statute of limitations for civil claims arising out of acts of child sexual abuse by providing a …

Ringing Changes: Systems Thinking About Legal Licensing, Joan W. Howarth, Judith Welch Wegner

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Part I examines core assumptions associated with licensing systems as well as associated ambiguities. In particular, it acknowledges multiple understandings about what “competence” is and differing assumptions about how to evaluate or measure it. Part I thus sets forth important predicates for our argument that only a multi-faceted licensing system can do what is needed in assuring minimal competence, and that not all forms of competence are best measured by traditional licensing examinations.

Part II raises the possibility of creating a post-first-year examination designed to assess critical thinking in the context of the first-year curriculum. It also considers ways in …

Flying Without Wings, Eleanor Lanier

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Because of Georgia’s unique court structure and political challenges, state advocates were unable to secure funding for a spot in the WINGS nest. But there is good news. The bonds we forged over our many years of advocacy on guardianship issues, and our effort to pull together the (unsuccessful) WINGS application, helped a few of our ideas take flight. This article highlights one highly successful and easily replicable effort that can be undertaken for a local court, in a region or at the state level, depending on resources and interest.

Clinical Syllabi As Demonstration Of Best Practices Implementation, Jean Goetz Mangan, Fernanda Mackay

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This Article posits that the University of Georgia School of Law for Clinical Programs course syllabi demonstrate implementation of recommendations found in leading works that advocate for change in traditional legal education. This Article reviews some high points of legal education reform with a focus on clinical legal education and then discusses the role of syllabi in the classroom and the potential within the document that many professors miss. This Article then turns to using syllabi to measure the extent that the clinics are implementing instruction that addresses all three apprenticeships as defined in the Carnegie Report.. To assess the …

Why Is The Protective Order Project Still In Business; Or, If The Family Justice Clinic Has Been At It So Long, Why Hasn’T Anything Changed? Domestic Violence As A Continuing Societal Concern, Christine M. Scartz, Chelsea Reese

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This Article explores the Georgia Law Family Violence and the continuing societal concern surrounding domestic violence.

Reflecting Clinics At 50: Reports From The Field, Russell C. Gabriel

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For lawyers, learning law by practicing law is customary. In the world of legal education, learning from practice is situated in both acceptance and opposition. There are practical arguments in its favor—the practicing bar wants law graduates to be “practice ready,” and theoretical arguments—understanding how law operates in the real world yields a clearer understanding of law itself, how it maintains social and economic structures, and how it impacts individuals. At the University of Georgia, law students, hungry for a legal education and a bar license, have been learning from practice in the Law School’s clinical programs for over fifty …