Legal Profession Commons^™

Speaking Truth To Powerlessness, Howard Lesnick

Vanderbilt Law Review

I have offers from three New York firms, and wonder if you can tell me which one is the most prestigious. A third-year student seeking my advice a year or two ago The most striking aspect of Patrick Schiltz's essay is that it directly addresses students. In word (the salutation) and deed (what follows), he speaks, not to the folks who help rule the world (judges, legislators, officials, weighty practitioners, and those rulers-once-or- twice-removed, professors), but to those who are hoping-dare they?-to ascend to some future vacancy in those positions.

Schiltz's message is in two parts: First, he tells students …

A Panel Discussion On A Proposed Code Of Ethics For Legal Commentators

Mercer Law Review

Featuring:

• Raymond M. Brown
• Paul Butler
• Erwin Chemerinsky
• Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr.
• Laurie L. Levenson
• John H. McElhaney
• Barry C. Scheck
• Mary Tillotson

Moderator: Professor James P. Fleissner

Foreword, Jeffrey Rosen

Michigan Law Review

America now is a society addicted to legalism that has lost its faith in legal argument. The impeachment of Bill Clinton was only the most visible manifestation of this paradox. Both Democrats and Republicans professed a rhetorical commitment to the rule of law while revealing a deep pessimism about the ability of courts, legislatures, or even citizens to transcend their biases and to converge, through deliberation, on impartial and democratically acceptable outcomes. The simplistic Supreme Court decisions that precipitated the impeachment - in particular, Morrison v. Olson,1 upholding the Independent Counsel law, and Jones v. Clinton,2 denying the President temporary …

Atticus Finch, In Context, Randolph N. Stone

Michigan Law Review

One summer night in 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Chicago boy visiting relatives in Mississippi, was abducted by two white men, beaten, and shot; his body was tied to a fan from a cotton gin and thrown in a river. Emmett's "crime": being black and allegedly whistling at a white woman. Through the early 1970s, hundreds of black men had been "legally" executed after being convicted, usually by all white juries or white judges, of sexually assaulting white women; hundreds more were lynched and otherwise extrajudicially executed. This is the historical context of white supremacy essentially ignored by Professor Lubet …

Reply To Comments On Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet

Michigan Law Review

Reconstructing Atticus Finch was intended to be provocative, so I am not surprised at the strength of the responses. Neither should I be surprised by the continuing reverence engendered by the fictional Atticus Finch; as I pointed out in my original essay, he is our moral archetype. Indeed, it was the accepted nobility of the character that made my question worth asking in the first place. What if Mayella had been attacked by Tom Robinson? Would Atticus still be a hero? To ask that question about a lesser figure would inevitably invite stock responses. Champions of the adversary system would …

Music Theory As A Mode Of Law: The Case Of Heinrich Schenker, Esq., Wayne Alpern

Cardozo Law Review

No abstract provided.

Symposium Introduction, Jennifer L. Motos, Jacob E. Daly

Mercer Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Ethics Of Being A Commentator Iii, Erwin Chemerinsky, Laurie Levenson

Mercer Law Review

The use of lawyers and law professors as commentators continues to increase. Although reporters have long used experts to explain and evaluate, in the last decade legal commentators have become a fixture in news stories about legal proceedings. A decade ago, when the McMartin Preschool case filled the news in Los Angeles, scarcely a commentator was used. A few years later, when the officers who beat Rodney King were tried in state court, daily legal commentary was absent. In sharp contrast, commentators were used on a regular basis during the federal prosecution of those officers. The subsequent trial of two …

A Ransom Note From The Opposition To The Proposed Rules Of Ethics For Legal Commentators, Raymond M. Brown

Mercer Law Review

Hijack the question!

That is a soupçon of tactical knowledge that every lawyer sojourning on the TV frontier absorbs quickly. In the fast-paced realm of the electronic media, there are limited opportunities to speak. To be effective you must disregard the dictates of politeness ingested at your mother's knee, ignore the question presented, and make your point succinctly. To wit:

Question: Do you think Bill Clinton should be impeached?

Answer: I think the abuse of power by Ken Starr doomed the Office of Independent Counsel and set a dangerous example for a whole generation of prosecutors.

Because the proponents of …

Comment On Steven Lubet, Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Rob Atkinson

Michigan Law Review

Professor Lubet has joined a growing list of revisionists who question Atticus's standing as the paragon of lawyerly virtue.1 But Professor Lubet takes revisionism in a distinctly postmodern direction, if not to a radically new level. Atticus's previous critics have wondered how he could have overlooked, perhaps even condoned, the pervasive racism, sexism, and classism of the Depression-era South. They have even occasionally censured his paternalism toward his pro bono client, the working-class black rape defendant Tom Robinson. But they have never questioned either Tom's claim of innocence or the propriety of Atticus's advocacy of that claim. Professor Lubet questions …

Large Law Firm Misery: It's The Tournament, Not The Money, Marc S. Galanter, Thomas M. Palay

Vanderbilt Law Review

Will young lawyers truly be happier and more fulfiled if they can restrain their appetite for money? Professor Schiltz's wonderful sermon certainly provides a stirring argument in the affirmative. In his eyes, it is greed (or materialism) that has led to the decline of the profession and makes lawyers unhappy. Lawyers' lust for money is at the root of their unhappiness with the profession.' This is broken down into two steps: "[m]oney is at the root of virtually everything that lawyers don't like about their profession: the long hours, the commercialization," etc., etc. And their obsession with money leads lawyers …

Beyond The Caricature: The Benefits And Challenges Of Large-Firm Practice, Mary A. Mclaughlin

Vanderbilt Law Review

I am the arch-villain of Professor Schiltz's article-not just a partner at a big firm, but the Hiring Partner. Because I have spent part of my career in government service and teaching, I may be uniquely positioned to react to Professor Schiltz's article. After get- ting out of law school in 1976, I clerked for a federal judge for a year and then went to a big firm in Washington, D.C. In 1980, became an Assistant United States Attorney, working as a criminal prosecutor for three-and-a-half years. I then went to Vanderbilt Law School where for two years I taught …

Reconstructing Atticus Finch, Steven Lubet

Michigan Law Review

Atticus Finch. No real-life lawyer has done more for the self-image or public perception of the legal profession than the hero of Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. For nearly four decades, the name of Atticus Finch has been invoked to defend and inspire lawyers, to rebut lawyer jokes, and to justify (and fine-tune) the adversary system. Lawyers are greedy. What about Atticus Finch? Lawyers only serve the rich. Not Atticus Finch. Professionalism is a lost ideal. Remember Atticus Finch. In the unreconstructed Maycomb, Alabama of the 1930s, Atticus was willing to risk his social standing, professional reputation, and …

Response To Steven Lubet: A Reaction: "Stand Up, Your Father [A Lawyer] Is Passing", Burnele V. Powell

Michigan Law Review

Professor Steven Lubet's review examines in the lawyering context the truth of Due de La Rochefoucauld's observation that "[o]ur virtues are mostly but vices in disguise." His question - one going to the very heart of what lawyering is about - asks readers of To Kill a Mockingbird whether they would be equally prepared to accept the fictional Atticus Fmch as the personification of the good lawyer if his black client, defendant Tom Robinson, actually committed the rape of the white woman, Mayella Ewell, for which he was charged. If Robinson was a rapist, how then does one square Atticus's …

Moral Icons: A Comment On Steven Lubet's Reconstructing Atticus Finch, William H. Simon

Michigan Law Review

Atticus Finch's conduct would have been justified by the bar's conventional norms even if he had known Tom Robinson to be guilty. That fact, however, is not the source of the admiration for him that To Kill a Mockingbird has induced in so many readers. That admiration depends on the clear premise of the novel that Finch plausibly believes that Tom Robinson is innocent. Thus, the bar's invocation of Finch as a sympathetic illustration of its norms is misleading. The ethics of the novel are quite different from those of the bar. Steven Lubet does a good job of showing …

Reconstructing Atticus Finch? A Response To Professor Lubet, Ann Althouse

Michigan Law Review

In one of her childishly obtuse moments, Scout, the narrator of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, denies that her father Atticus Finch is any sort of proper example of how a lawyer ought to act when cross-examining a witness. The prosecutor's crossexamination of the accused Tom Robinson has moved her friend Dill to tears: "I couldn't stand . . . [t]hat old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway, talking so hateful to him _" Scout, who has taken her friend out of the courtroom, explains: "Dill, that's his job . . . . He's supposed to act that way." Atticus, …

Spring 1999

Transcript

No abstract provided.

Volume 22, Issue 1 (Spring 1999)

Transcript

No abstract provided.

From Representing Clients To Serving Recipients: Transforming The Role Of The Iv-D Child Support Enforcement Attorney, Barbara Glesner Fines

Faculty Works

Attorneys for the poor are being asked to serve more clients for less money and with more restrictions on their practice than ever before. These restrictions, both on amounts and uses of funds, influence the attorney's independent professional judgment. Determining when that influence is inappropriate becomes a difficult practical and ethical issue. Is this issue resolved if one simply reconceptualizes the role of the entities and individuals involved? What if the government becomes the client and the individual receiving legal services becomes something other than a client? Examining the development of governmental funding of child support enforcement, one finds just …

In Brief, Spring/Summer 1999, New York Law School

New York Law School In Brief

No abstract provided.

Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring 1999)

Alumni Update

No abstract provided.

Coming Of Age: Recognizing The Importance Of Interdisciplinary Education In Law Practice, Janet Weinstein

Washington Law Review

This Article proposes that lawyers need to be creative problem solvers if they are truly to serve the needs of their clients. The ability to collaborate with professionals from other disciplines is an important aspect of creative problem solving. The Article examines the skills required for creative problem solving and law students' and attorneys' facility with these skills.The Article further discusses the barriers to providing interdisciplinary training in law schools and suggests ways to incorporate such training.

Constructions Of Client Competence And Theories Of Practice, Robert Rubinson

All Faculty Scholarship

An entrenched stereotype about the elderly is that they inevitably experience a progressive decline in cognitive function - what the Article calls the "idea of decrement." The vast majority of elderly, however, do not experience declining competence for most or all of their lives. Nevertheless, attorneys interpret much of what elderly clients say and do as the product of cognitive impairment, and sometimes even the elderly themselves construct stories about the world and their circumstances in line with the idea of decrement. These attitudes and social constructions, interacting in complex ways, can distort the ability of attorneys to represent elderly …

Thirteenth Annual Scholarship Banquet - Ticket, Las Vegas Chapter Of The National Bar Association

Other Scholarship Banquet Materials

Thirteenth Annual Scholarship Banquet Ticket No. 176

Thirteenth Annual Scholarship Banquet - Invitation, Las Vegas Chapter Of The National Bar Association

Other Scholarship Banquet Materials

Thirteenth Annual Scholarship Banquet Invitation, RSVP

Thirteenth Annual Scholarship Banquet - Program, Las Vegas Chapter Of The National Bar Association

Other Scholarship Banquet Materials

13th Annual Scholarship Banquet Program

A Primer On 11 U.S.C. § 328(A) And Its Use In Alternative Billing Methods In Bankruptcy, Robert J. Landry Iii, James R. Higdon

Mercer Law Review

Compensation of attorneys and professionals in the bankruptcy field is one of the most written about areas in bankruptcy law. Professionals, both familiar and unfamiliar with the mandates of the Bankruptcy Code and Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure, are having an increasingly difficult time obtaining approval for the envisioned compensation. Problems generally do not arise for debtors' attorneys in the run-of-the-mill Chapter 7 case or Chapter 13 case. Flat fees are charged in most of these cases, and applications to employ debtors' attorneys are not filed. Therefore, retention orders are not entered. However, outside the run-of-the-mill Chapter 7 or 13 …

Volume 66

Tennessee Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Primer On Mdps: Should The No Rule Become A New Rule, Laurel Terry

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article is the second of four major articles or book chapters that I have written about MDPs. "MDPs" refers to multidisciplinary partnerships or multidisciplinary practices between lawyers and nonlawyers. Prior to 1998, virtually all U.S. states had lawyer discipline rules that prohibited a lawyer from sharing legal fees with a nonlawyer or practicing law in partnership with a nonlawyer. In 1998, however, the American Bar Association created a Commission on Multidisciplinary Practice to reconsider these rules. One impetus for the creation of this Commission was the increasingly large numbers of lawyers who were working for the Big 5 Accounting …

Gender, Risk Taking, And Negotiation Performance, Charles B. Craver, David W. Barnes

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article will evaluate the impact of the confluence of two factors- gender and the availability of a credit/no-credit grading option- on student performance in Professor Craver's Legal Negotiating course at George Washington University. Our empirical assessment will analyze the results achieved on negotiation exercises and on course papers by the 612 male and female law students who took Professor Craver's course over the past eleven years. Do a greater percentage of female students take the Legal Negotiating course on a credit/no-credit basis, when that option is available, than do their male cohorts? Are the woman students who take the …