Law Commons^™

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 …

Judicial Rhetoric & Lawyers' Roles, Samuel J. Levine

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Notwithstanding the rich scholarly literature debating the proper roles of lawyers and the precise contours of lawyers’ ethical conduct, as a descriptive matter, the American legal system operates as an adversarial system, premised in part upon clear demarcations between the functions of different lawyers within the system. Broadly speaking, prosecutors have the distinct role of serving justice, which includes the duty to try to convict criminal defendants who are deserving of punishment, in a way that is consistent with both substantive and procedural justice. In contrast, private attorneys have a duty to zealously represent the best interests of their clients, …

The Client Who Did Too Much, Nancy B. Rapoport

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Using Hitchcock's MacGuffin as a theme, I discuss the dynamics between client and lawyer when the client so obsesses over the issue driving him that he persuades (or attempts to persuade) the lawyer to do things that are inadvisable from the lawyer's point of view.

Foreword To The Conference: The Law: Business Or Profession? The Continuing Relevance Of Julius Henry Cohen For The Practice Of Law In The Twenty-First Century, Samuel J. Levine

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No abstract provided.

Document Design For Lawyers: The End Of The Typewriter Era, Linda L. Berger

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This article discusses simple design rules that you can follow in documents that need not comply with court rules and some that you may use even in documents that must comply.

Social Networking And Land Use Planning And Regulation: Practical Benefits, Pitfalls And Ethical Considerations, Patricia E. Salkin

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This article explores how social networking sites have been used or might be used in the land use context. Part I focuses on the use of social networking for land use planning and zoning. It includes a discussion of the pros and cons of the use of social networking sites to present public information and to gather public input and invite general participation in the process, as well as to provide notice to the public of forthcoming government decision-making. This section offers concrete examples of how this technology is currently being used in the land use context. Part II focuses …

The Jurisprudential Turn In Legal Ethics, Katherine R. Kruse

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When legal ethics developed as an academic discipline in the mid-1970s, its theoretical roots were in moral philosophy. The early theorists in legal ethics were moral philosophers by training, and they explored legal ethics as a branch of moral philosophy. From the vantage point of moral philosophy, lawyers’ professional duties comprised a system of moral duties that governed lawyers in their professional lives, a “role-morality” for lawyers that competed with ordinary moral duties. In defining this “role-morality,” the moral philosophers accepted the premise that “good lawyers” are professionally obligated to pursue the interests of their clients all the way to …

The Tail Still Wags The Dog: The Pervasive And Inappropriate Influence By The Psychiatric Profession On The Civil Commitment Process, William Brooks

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The imposition of substantive and procedural protections in the civil commitment process thirty years ago created the expectation that courts would scrutinize commitment decisions by psychiatrists more closely and serve as a check on psychiatric decision-making. This has not happened.

Today, psychiatrists continue to play an overly influential role in the civil commitment process. Psychiatrists make initial commitment decisions that often lack accuracy because they rely on clinical judgment only. Furthermore, many psychiatrists do not want legal standards interfering with treatment decisions, and the nebulous nature of the concept of dangerousness enables doctors to make pretextual assessments of danger. At …

Law Of The Land – Year In Review, Patricia E. Salkin

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This column reviews trends and interesting cases in land use law as reported on “Law of the Land” during the last half of 2007. “Law of the Land” is a blog created to be of interest to land use lawyers, planners, developers, professors, and students. The blog is updated daily with a review of a recent land use case decided by a state or federal court. In addition, the site has reported on relevant gubernatorial executive orders, offered book reviews, and occasionally starts a discussion on current events issues, such as climate change and has led to robust debate about …

Do Judges Systematically Favor The Interests Of The Legal Profession?, Benjamin H. Barton

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This Article answers this question with the following jurisprudential hypothesis. Many legal outcomes can be explained, and future cases predicted, by asking a very simple question: is there a plausible result in this case that will significantly affect the interests of the legal profession (positively or negatively)? If so, the case will be decided in the way that offers the best result for the legal profession.

The article presents theoretical support from the new institutionalism, cognitive psychology and economic theory. The Article then gathers and analyzes supporting cases from areas as diverse as constitutional law, torts, professional responsibility, employment law, …

Standing In Babylon, Looking Toward Zion, Katherine R. Kruse

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This article defends the triumph of vision at the 2006 UNLV Conference on Representing Children in Families by examining the interrelationship between idealism and realism in the definition of lawyers' roles and the importance of idealized visions to the process of reforming dysfunctional systems. This article suggests that the vision of lawyering for children sketched in the UNLV Recommendations--though based in idealism--is both deeply realistic and ultimately practical. This article thus affirms the choice of the group of idealists who stood together for a few days in modern-day Babylon to keep their eyes trained on the vision of Zion as …

Bankruptcy Ethics Issues For Solos And Small Firms, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This chapter, in Corinne Cooper & Catherine E. Vance's book Attorney Liability in Bankruptcy, walks the reader through some of the traditional ethics issues triggered by representing consumers and small businesses. It also addresses some of the ethics issues that the recent Bankruptcy Amendments (BAPCPA) have created.

Lawyers Should Be Lawyers, But What Does That Mean?: A Response To Aiken & Wizner And Smith, Katherine R. Kruse

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Lawyers should be more like social workers. That is the message of Law as Social Work, the provocative essay by Jane Aiken and Stephen Wizner (Aiken & Wizner) in the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy volume, which preceded the conference on Promoting Justice Through Interdisciplinary Teaching, Practice, and Scholarship, hosted by Washington University School of Law in March 2003. Almost as if in reply, Abbe Smith's contribution to the same pre-conference volume reasserts the importance of lawyers as zealous and partisan advocates, using the realities of the criminal defense context to argue for the value of the lawyer's …

Enron, Titanic, And The Perfect Storm, Nancy B. Rapoport

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In this article, I explore the contention of Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron CEO, that Enron's debacle was due to a perfect storm of events. I reject his contention, arguing instead that Enron's downfall was more like Titanic's - hubris and an over-reliance on checks and balances led to Enron's downfall. I then explore how character (especially of those at the top of an organization) can lead to Enron-like disasters, and I talk about how cognitive dissonance can lead to very smart people making very stupid decisions. I end with some musings about how lawyers can learn from Enron.

An Overview Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act And Its Implications For Attorneys, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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On July 30, 2002, President Bush signed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, H.R. 3763, well-publicized in the press as a legislative response to the perceived excesses of corporate America: Enron; WorldCom; Tyco; Global Crossing, etc.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 contains an array of provisions affecting lawyers as professionals serving businesses and contains one provision that will clearly impact corporate counsel in the ethical discharge of their duties. Section 307 of the Act and the recently released Proposed Roles of the Securities Exchange Commission regarding lawyer duties and implementation of Section 307 require counsel to go "up the ladder," to …

Enron, Titanic, And The Perfect Storm, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This article explores the contention of Jeffrey Skilling, former Enron CEO, that Enron's debacle was due to a perfect storm of events. It rejects his contention, arguing instead that Enron's downfall was more like Titanic's - hubris and an over-reliance on checks and balances led to Enron's downfall. The article then explores how character (especially of those at the top of an organization) can lead to Enron-like disasters, and discusses how cognitive dissonance can lead to very smart people making very stupid decisions. It ends with some musings about how lawyers can learn from Enron.

Is "Thinking Like A Lawyer" Really What We Want To Teach?, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This article argues that the phrase thinking like a lawyer assumes that other professions don't have their own ways of approaching problems and that law schools only need to teach how lawyers think, rather than how lawyers do what they do. It suggests that law schools should do much more than just teach law students how to think.

The Intractable Problem Of Bankruptcy Ethics: Square Peg, Round Hole, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This article continues my earlier research on conflicts of interest in bankruptcy cases, particularly in chapter 11 cases. It suggests that conflicts in interest in chapter 11 bankruptcy cases should not be handled the same way that conflicts are handled under state ethics rules, and it proposes a new section of the Bankruptcy Code to cover conflicts of interest in cases filed under chapter 11.

The William S. Boyd School Of Law Juvenile Justice Clinic, Mary E. Berkheiser

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This article reviews the work of the Juvenile Justice Clinic at the William S. Boyd School of Law.

Dressed For Excess: How Hollywood Affects The Professional Behavior Of Lawyers, Nancy B. Rapoport

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This article discusses two related points: first, that the way in which movies portray lawyers shapes how clients view effective/ineffective lawyer behavior, and second, that the portrayal also helps lawyers to forget appropriate professional behavior.

Embracing Descent: The Bankruptcy Of A Business Paradigm For Conceptualizing And Regulating The Legal Profession, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Lawyers are said to travel in packs, or at least pairs, and in the popular parlance are often compared to hoards of locusts, herds of cattle, or unruly mobs. However, at least for purposes of assessing concerns with professionalism currently surrounding the bar and the public, whether attorneys are more or less social than other human animals does not matter. My point is simply that lawyers are social beings; like other human beings in social and occupational groups, lawyers behave largely in accordance with group norms, in much the same way peer pressure led Julian English toward juvenile delinquency in …

Lawyers' Representation Of Clients In Mediation: Using Economics And Psychology To Structure Advocacy In A Non-Adversarial Setting, Jean R. Sternlight

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Many believe that lawyers' adversarial methods and mindsets are inherently inconsistent with mediation. Lawyers' emphasis on advocacy and winning is seen as ill-suited to mediation's nonadversarial, problem-solving approach to dispute resolution. Yet, as mediation grows increasingly common, lawyers are frequently accompanying their clients to mediation and often play a critical and direct part in the process. Particularly where disputes are complex or involve relatively large sums of money, it is likely that one or both disputants will be represented by an attorney at the mediation. This Article argues that attorneys need not and ought not to abandon their advocacy or …

Legal Services Lawyers And The Influence Of Third Parties On The Lawyer-Client Relationship: Some Thoughts From Scholars, Practitioners, And Courts, Samuel J. Levine

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Among the challenges facing the lawyer who renders legal services to clients with limited means are ethical and professional questions relating to the influence of third parties on the lawyer-client relationship. Although all lawyers may potentially face ethical dilemmas involving third parties, legal services lawyers are particularly vulnerable to such issues because, unlike most lawyers, legal services lawyers generally rely on the financial support of someone other than their client. These challenges may take many forms, affecting a variety of ethical and professional considerations. Levine examines a number of areas in which bar association committees, scholars, and courts have addressed …

Interpreting Insurance Policies, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Like any other contract, an insurance policy may become the subject of a legal dispute. When disputes arise over insurance coverage, lawyers must combine their skill in contract interpretation with their knowledge of insurance law, bringing both to bear on the special problems related to this type of contract. Each dispute has unique traits, but a few basic ground rules of contract law and insurance law can help you interpret insurance policies and resolve disputes over insurance coverage.

Democratic Responses To International Terrorism, Christopher L. Blakesley

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This volume provides a multidisciplinary study of terrorism. The editor notes at the outset the difficulty of definition: "Terrorism is not a one-dimensional problem; it transcends many frontiers: political, jurisdictional, institutional, disciplinary and methodological. So approaching the problem from only one perspective may lead to only partial understanding and an incomplete strategy for developing constructive responses” (p. 3). Note the tendency of even this careful statement to assume that terrorism is always committed by others, Also, although legal definition and consideration may be implied by the terms polical, jurisdictional, institutional and disciplinary, which are indicated as various dimensions of …

The Rehnquist Court, Statutory Interpretation, Inertial Burdens, And A Misleading Version Of Democracy, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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No one theory or school of thought consistently dominates judicial application of statutes, but the basic methodology employed by courts seems well-established if not always well-defined. Most mainstream judges and lawyers faced with a statutory construction task will look at (although with varying emphasis) the text of the statute, the legislative history of the provision, the context of the enactment, evident congressional purpose, and applicable agency interpretations, often employing the canons of construction for assistance. Although orthodox judicial thought suggests that the judge's role is confined to discerning textual meaning or directives of the enacting legislature, courts also often examine …

An Assessment Of Alternative Strategies For Increasing Access To Legal Services, Jeffrey W. Stempel

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Since the late 1930s, lawyers have argued that their services are not used to the fullest advantage by a large segment of the population. More recently, other concerned groups such as trade unions and consumer organizations also have become convinced that there is an underutilization of lawyers' services, and that it is important to increase access to such services. As a result, attempts have been made to develop alternatives to the traditional methods of providing legal services that to date have proved inadequate in meeting the legal needs of the public. Legal clinics have proliferated, prepaid legal services plans have …