Legal Profession Commons^™

Law Firm Silence, Katrina Lee

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyers’ Career Aspirations In Canada And The United States, Meghan Dawe, Ronit Dinovitzer

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Foreword: The Professional Socialization Of Lawyers, Matthew Diller

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

All The King’S Lawyers, Rebecca Aviel

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law's Penal-Professional World Order, Pilar Margarita Hernández Escontrías

Fordham Law Review

The attorney discipline regime has been propagandized as a necessary mechanism to police poor attorney conduct to protect the public. According to this myth, professional associations investigate attorney misconduct and impose sanctions, thus protecting the “noble profession” from attorneys who would tarnish its reputation. Violations of ethics rules lead to investigation, prosecution, and punishment by the state bar. In structure and language, state bars and judicial officers replicate the state in their use of disciplinary frameworks and regimes.

The self-regulating bar is a form of punitive governance used by the state to control entry into and expulsion from the profession. …

Training To The Tech: Fostering The Ethical Adaptation To And Adoption Of Emerging Technologies In The Practice Of Law, Raymond H, Brescia

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Socializing The Rule 2.1 Lawyer-Advisor, Casey E. Faucon

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Winging It: Convergence, Convivencia, And Belonging Of Latina Lawyers, Verónica C. Gonzales

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Chicana Professionalism: Embracing Greñas, Glitter & Boots, Luz E. Herrera

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Building A Professionally Socialized Immigration Bar: A Comparative Case Study, Jayanth K. Krishnan, Kunle Ajagbe

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

“No Further Discussion Necessary”: Compliance As Professionalism In Legal Education, Sarah J. Schendel

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Red, White-, And Blue-Collar Crime: Federal Sentencing Practices Among White-Collar And Blue-Collar Offenders, Henna Judge

Fordham Law Review

Under the current federal sentencing regime, district courts exercise immense amounts of discretion when sentencing. Though strict adherence to the U.S. Sentencing Commission Guidelines (the “Guidelines”) was once mandatory, courts must now use these Guidelines as an advisory starting point and make a series of fact-specific determinations when sentencing a defendant. Though judicial discretion in this realm aids in preventing undue reliance on Guidelines-range recommendations that can lack nuance, it also invites bias.

In recent years, scholars and courts alike have called attention to a potential disparity in the way blue-collar and white-collar offenders are sentenced. This Note examines relevant …

Separation-Of-Powers Lochnerism, Andrea Scoseria Katz

Fordham Law Review

One hundred and twenty years ago, in 1905, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered one of the single most notorious opinions in history, striking down a New York labor law for violating the right to contract—a right found nowhere in the text of the Constitution. Though the era of Lochner v. New York is well past us, the judicial impulses that gave rise to the case remain. With a new champion in the Roberts Court, Lochnerism is alive and well, deployed in a new context to redefine the relationships between the president, Congress, federal agencies, and the courts.

Bringing together two …

Equality In Sentencing Mitigation, John B. Meixner Jr.

Fordham Law Review

As guilty-plea rates have skyrocketed, sentencing has become an increasingly important part of criminal procedure. With judges often wielding significant discretion at sentencing, a key question is how judges interpret mitigation: evidence about the defendant’s background or the case that supports a reduced sentence. Past empirical research—both experimental and in real-world cases—indicates that mitigation plays an important role in determining sentences. But does mitigation help everyone, or does it reinforce inequalities that frequently infect other areas of criminal procedure? Do low-income Black defendants with appointed counsel benefit from sentencing mitigation as much as wealthier White defendants with private attorneys? Do …

A Distinctive Court: A Glimpse Into The History And Significance Of The D.C. Circuit, Judge J. Michelle Childs

Fordham Law Review

Judge J. Michelle Childs serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Before her appointment, Judge Childs received a B.A. from the University of South Florida Honors College and a J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law. She also received Masters degrees from the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business and from Duke University School of Law, as well as an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of South Carolina. After working in private practice for eight years, Judge Childs received an appointment to serve as the Deputy Director for the …

Shortcomings Of Law School And Big Law, Julian Velasco

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Doing Justice With Empathy: Black Prosecutors In The Age Of Mass Incarceration, Kevin Woodson

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Taking Integrity Risks Seriously, Miriam H. Baer

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

Law Jobs: Professional Regulation, The Division Of Legal Labor, And Institutional Change, Emily S. Taylor Poppe

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

A World-Threatening Feeling: Grief, Moral Injury, And Institutional Loss In Rural Courts, Michele Statz

Fordham Law Review

No abstract provided.

In Defense Of Pro Se Parents, Matthew F. Gillam

Fordham Law Review

Who gets to represent children in federal court? Adults have long been permitted to represent themselves in federal court under the plain meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1654. And, many adults do just that every year. But what if the real party in interest is a minor child? Who, if anyone, can exercise that child’s right to proceed pro se?

This Note argues that the correct reading of 28 U.S.C. § 1654 would permit parents to litigate pro se in federal court where the real party in interest is their minor child. This is based on a straightforward, grammatically correct …

Regulating The Public Defender Identity, Irene Oritseweyinmi Joe

Fordham Law Review

The public defender institution has trouble meeting its mission. This is partly because, despite the specific and clear purpose of representing indigent defendants in criminal proceedings, public defender offices rely on various centering principles to meet this objective. The institution falters if it chooses a centering principle that unwittingly complicates its ability to meet the institution’s central mission. For public defender leaders tasked with developing and maintaining an institutional identity for a particular office, neither legal nor professional regulations supply the type of considerations that guarantee that an adopted identity will comply with core institutional responsibilities. This project seeks to …

Good Lawyers, Good Sports?: The Professional Identity Of Sports Lawyers Representing Not-For-Profit Entities, Bruce A. Green

Faculty Scholarship

ABA accreditation standards require law schools to develop students’ professional identity, including by encouraging “an intentional exploration of” the legal profession’s “values [and] guiding principles.” This Essay invites legal academia as well as practitioners to explore issues of legal ethics, professionalism, and, especially, professional identity in the context of a new area of legal practice: sports lawyers’ representation of “NIL collectives,” which are not-for-profit entities that college boosters establish to enable college athletes to benefit financially from their name, image and likeness (“NIL”). The work of sports lawyers advising NIL collectives offers an interesting case study for considering how professional …

Chicken Or Egg: Diversity And Innovation In The Corporate Legal Marketplace, Michele Destefano

Fordham Law Review

Although their bank accounts might suggest otherwise, these are not the best of times for lawyers who work in the corporate legal marketplace. Instead, the trouble with lawyers in the corporate legal marketplace is that they are failing to answer two calls to action made by corporate clients, both of which are of great magnitude and importance for the future of the profession. The first call to action is one that Professor Deborah L. Rhode focused a lot of her scholarship on: the call to enhance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in the profession. The second call to action is …

Why State Courts Should Authorize Nonlawyers To Practice Law, Bruce A. Green

Fordham Law Review

The unauthorized practice of law (“UPL”) is a crime in most states. Many scholars have criticized UPL laws as unnecessary impediments to low-income individuals’ ability to obtain legal help. Meanwhile, courts often defend these laws by analogizing the dangers posed by unlicensed legal practice to those posed by unlicensed medical practice. Chronicling two notable UPL suits to illustrate how nonlawyers may help low-income individuals seeking legal assistance and arguing that comparison to the medical profession in many ways favors liberalizing UPL enforcement, Professor Bruce Green concludes that state courts should allow nonlawyers greater freedom to provide legal assistance.

A Ram From Sparta, Constantine N. Katsoris

Fordham Law Review

At some point in our lives each of us must decide upon a career or profession and the path necessary to achieve that goal. Some make that decision at an early age; others make it much later in life and are often influenced by outside forces, experiences, opportunities, and obligations. Choosing which path to take is not easy, and in this regard, Professor Constantine Katsoris would like to share the crossroads he encountered throughout his six decades of teaching at Fordham Law School—a school he has come to describe as the school of opportunity. This Essay outlines his career …

No Justice, No Pleas: Subverting Mass Incarceration Through Defendant Collective Action, Andrew Manuel Crespo

Fordham Law Review

The American penal system is a system of massive, racially unjust incarceration. It is also, to quote the U.S. Supreme Court, a “system of pleas.” The latter drives the former, as coercive plea bargaining makes it possible for the state to do two things that are otherwise hard to pull off at once: increase convictions and sentence lengths. Mass incarceration is a predictable result. But while plea bargaining is intensely coercive when leveraged against individuals, the system of pleas has a structural weak point. That Achilles’ heel is exposed once we see people facing prosecution not as isolated individuals but …

A Commons In The Master’S House, Daniel Farbman

Fordham Law Review

Almost everyone who reads these words is an institutional insider in some form. Those of us who aspire toward transformation, liberation, and resistance from our institutional settings are forced to confront Audre Lorde’s striking admonition that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” For some, finding themselves in the master’s house is a spur towards purism—a rejection of institutional power in search of a “pure” remove from which to critique it. For others, it is a dispiriting check on their aspirations and an invitation to sullen fatalism. This Essay questions whether we are bound to the hard consequences …

Progressive Prosecutors Are Not Trying To Dismantle The Master’S House, And The Master Wouldn’T Let Them Anyway, Paul Butler

Fordham Law Review

The first thing to note about Audre Lorde’s famous phrase “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” is that it cannot literally be true. If tools can dismantle the master’s house, the master’s own tools would be good as anyone’s. The main problem would not be that the tools don’t work, but rather how to get them to the people who most need the master’s house dismantled—the enslaved ones. But the considerable work that the phrase does in social justice movements and critical theory is figurative rather than literal. It is usually intended as a rebuke of liberal …

When We Fight, We Win: Eviction Defense As Subversive Lawyering, Eloise Lawrence

Fordham Law Review

This Essay will examine the “sword and shield” model in action to explore the meaning of “subversive lawyering” in the housing context, particularly in eviction defense. In this model, we—the lawyers and law students— provide the “shield” (i.e., legal defense), while the organizers and members of grassroots housing justice organizations provide the “sword” (i.e., public pressure and protest). The lawyers are shielding tenants and foreclosed homeowners in the courts, which allows these “defendants” to simultaneously work with organizers to take necessary extralegal actions to ensure they are protected from displacement.