Legal Profession Commons^™

Of Blood And The Buddha: A Nichiren Primer On Counseling Clients, John W. Teeter Jr.

Faculty Articles

Should you pray when you bleed? More specifically, should a Buddhist woman refrain from chanting and reciting from the Lotus Sutra during her menstrual cycle? This was the query fielded by the fiery prophet Nichiren in 1264 in Kamakura, Japan.

Nichiren's response, however, is far more than a doctrinal resolution of an esoteric theological uncertainty. To the contrary, Nichiren's advice is a model of analysis, common sense, and compassion that today's attorneys would be wise to emulate. As set forth below, Nichiren's cautious, sensitive, and pragmatic approach provides an enlightened template on how we can best counsel our clients in …

Lawyers, Power, And Strategic Expertise, Colleen Shanahan, Anna Carpenter, Alyx Mark

Faculty Articles

This empirical study analyzes the experience of the parties described above, specifically the power, representation, and strategic expertise they bring to a dispute. Our analysis of these factors clarifies how representation may be a solution to the access to justice crisis. We find that a representative helps most parties most of the time. We also find that the other party’s representation and the representative’s strategic expertise are significant factors for understanding representation for civil litigants. This study analyzes a database of 1,700 unemployment insurance appeals in the District of Columbia over a two-year period, the broadest and deepest collection of …

Class Warfare: The Disappearance Of Low-Income Litigants From The Civil Docket, Myriam Gilles

Articles

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the startling disparities in income and wealth in contemporary U.S. society. The enormous concentration of economic power in the top 1% is the culmination of decades of significant income and wealth gains for the top, combined with stagnant or decreasing growth for the majority - a trend that continues apace. But nowhere is the gap more glaring than in the civil docket, where class actions brought by or on behalf of low-income consumers and employees are on the verge of disappearing.

To be sure, the decline in class actions is only …

Rwu Law: The Magazine Of Roger Williams University School Of Law (Issue 9) (2016), Roger Williams University School Of Law

RWU Law

No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Personal Jurisdiction In Legal Malpractice Litigation, Cassandra Burke Robertson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Lawyers are increasingly engaging in multi-jurisdictional practice—and their representation is increasingly giving rise to cross­-jurisdictional malpractice actions. Over the years, courts have issued divergent and contradictory opinions about whether out-of-state attorneys representing clients only on out-of-state matters can constitutionally be subject to personal jurisdiction in the client’s home state. The Supreme Court’s recent opinions in Daimler v. Bauman and Walden v. Fiore do little to settle this question and, in fact, may raise more questions than they answer. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s new personal jurisdiction jurisprudence offers an opportunity for courts to adopt a more cohesive analysis of personal jurisdiction …

Everyone Makes Mistakes: Attorney's Fee Recovery In Legal Malpractice Suits, Sande L. Buhai

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

This Article argues that the American Rule should be changed for legal malpractice suits because the attorney–client relationship is the quintessential fiduciary relationship and because of the added concern of unequal information available to each party as a result of the large disparity in power. Attorneys must abide by ethical rules and owe fiduciary duties to their clients, which include the duties of competence, diligence, and loyalty. Because it is this very relationship that distinguishes legal malpractice suits from an ordinary lawsuit, awarding attorney’s fees to the damaged plaintiff client helps maintain fiduciary relationships and furthers the interests of justice. …

In Memory Of Thomas Bowman Black (1928–2016), Professor Of Law, St. Mary's University School Of Law (1974–1988), David Dittfurth

St. Mary's Law Journal

Tribute to Thomas Bowman Black (1928–2016), Professor of Law, St. Mary's University School of Law (1974–1988).

Love, Anger, And Lawyering, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

This essay explores how mindfulness practices helped one lawyer, now legal scholar, explore the roles of love and anger in lawyering.

A Golden Anniversary, P. Thomas Distanislao Iii, Ann Elizabeth Reid

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

Yellow Flag Fever: Describing Negative Legal Precedent In Citators, Aaron S. Kirschenfeld

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Is Pro Bono Practice In Legal “Backwaters” Beyond The Scope Of The Model Rules?, Barbara Graves-Poller

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

[Excerpt] "While many private sector attorneys offer pro bono legal services that reflect the same level of diligence and skill characteristic of the work done on behalf of their paying clients, the egregious failures described in the MC v. GC case and those that occur in many unreported matters highlight the dangers of pro bono initiatives designed to bridge the “access to justice gap.” As used here, the term “justice gap” refers to the chasm between the need for legal representation in civil disputes and public interest attorneys available to serve poor and working class clients. Justice gap pro bono …

Foreword: Mindfulness, Writing, And The "Inner Lawyer", Shari Motro

Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest

Foreword for the Richmond Journal of Law and the Public Interest Vol XIX, Issue IV

Law's Emotions, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The emerging interdisciplinary field of “Law and Emotions” brings together scholars from law, psychology, classics, economics, literature and philosophy all of whom have a defining interest in law’s various relations to our emotions and to emotional life: they share a passion for law’s passions. They also share the critical premise, or assumption, that most legal scholars of at least the last half century, with a few exceptions, have mistakenly accorded too great of a role to reason, rationality, and the cool calculations of self interest, and have accorded too small a role to emotion, to the creation, the imagining, the …

Work With Me Here: Collaborative Learning In The Legal Research Classroom, Susan Azyndar

Journal Articles

From the Article

This article seeks to contribute to this pedagogical project by seeking out links between Millennial student needs, legal workplace expectations, and thoughtful pedagogical strategies; it centers on the important legal skill of collaboration.

Marketable And Mobile: Ube Recommended, Veryl Victoria Miles

Scholarly Articles

The first administration of the Uniform Bar Examination (UBE) occurred just five years ago in Missouri and North Dakota. At that time, the concept of a bar examination with a test score that was portable among participating jurisdictions was an exciting development for longtime proponents of a uniform bar exam. And while there were only two participating jurisdictions on board in 2011, NCBE was well on its way in making the case for the UBE as an attractive test alternative throughout the nation. Today there are 25 jurisdictions that have adopted the UBE, and by July 2018 all 25 jurisdictions …

The Changing Economic Geography Of Large U.S. Law Firms, William D. Henderson, Arthur S. Alderson

Articles by Maurer Faculty

The number of lawyers working for large U.S. law firms has increased dramatically. One important manifestation of this is the growing network of branch offices. Informed by three theories of spatial change—law firms (i) following the geographic expansion of their clients, relying on (ii) traditional agglomeration economies and relying on (iii) agglomeration benefits emerging from a location’s connectivity to other important geographies— we analyze longitudinal data on large U.S. law firms and the global urban network in which they are embedded. We find that, after the late 2000s, geographic expansion was less connected to organic market growth in U.S. domestic …

Regulators At The Margins: The Impact Of Malpractice Insurers On Solo And Small Firm Lawyers, Leslie Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

Liability insurers often informally regulate the behavior of their insureds through the underwriting process, premium pricing, contract design, and risk management practices. This Article explores whether lawyer professional liability ("LPL") insurers effectively regulate the behavior of solo and small firm lawyers in ways that encourage responsible conduct. The Article draws on interviews of insurance industry executives, risk management counsel, and insured lawyers, as well as insurer documents and surveys of lawyers, to explore the impact of LPL insurers on the work lives of solo and small firm lawyers. The research reveals that LPL insurers appear to regulate the behavior of …

Culture As A Structural Problem In Indigent Defense, Eve Brensike Primus

Articles

In Part I, I will describe the ways in which today's right-to-counsel challenges are similar to and different from those that faced the writers of the 1961 symposium. I will also explain in more detail why the structural conditions of criminal defense work to create (and, to some extent, always have created) a cultural problem in indigent defense delivery systems across the country. In Part II, I will discuss why I believe that we are, once again, facing a moment for potential reform, albeit reform that is different in scope and kind from that which was possible in the 1960s. …

Duties To Organizational Clients, William H. Simon

Faculty Scholarship

Loyalty to an organizational client means fidelity to the substantive legal structure that constitutes it. Although this principle is not controversial in the abstract, it is commonly ignored in professional discourse and doctrine. This article explains the basic notion of organizational loyalty and identifies some mistaken tendencies in discourse and doctrine, especially the "Managerialist Fallacy" that leads lawyers to conflate the client organization with its senior managers. The article then applies the basic notion to some hard cases, concluding with a critical appraisal of the rationale for confidentiality with organizational clients.

The Role Of Language Interpretation In Providing A Quality Mediation Process, Alexandra Carter, Shawn Watts

Faculty Scholarship

This paper focuses on the role of language in mediation and the challenges multiple language fluencies bring to the practice. Beginning with a discussion of the process and ethics of mediation as a form of alternative dispute resolution, as distinct from other forms of dispute resolution including arbitration, the paper shifts to consider the importance of language. Language, and more specifically interpretation, plays a central role in the integrity of the mediation process and the quality of its outcomes. Each stage of mediation requires the participants and the mediator understand one another to ensure effective communication and a quality process. …

"The More Things Change . . .": New Moves For Legitimizing Racial Discrimination In A "Post-Race" World, Mario L. Barnes

Articles

No abstract provided.

Cultural Evolution Or Revolution? The Millennial's Growing Impact On Professionalism And The Practice Of Law, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Katie M. Lachter, Gabriella Morello

Articles

No abstract provided.

The Contested Value Of Normative Legal Scholarship, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legal scholarship, under attack from critics both inside and outside the legal academy, is on the horns of a “normativity” dilemma. To some critics, legal scholarship isn’t scholarship, because it’s too normative; while to others, it may be scholarship, but it’s not legal because it’s not normative enough.

In this article, I address one side of this issue, what I call the anti-normativity complaint: to wit, that legal scholarship is somehow not “true scholarship” because so much of it is overtly normative. Legal scholarship, according to this strand of criticism, isn’t true scholarship because of the dominance of “ought” …

In Memoriam: J. Rodney Johnson, W. Hamilton Bryson

University of Richmond Law Review

No abstract provided.

A Genesis Of Conflict: The Zero-Sum Mindset, Jonathan R. Cohen

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Parties in conflict often operate under the assumption that for one party to win, the other party must lose. This concept, known as the "zero-sum mindset, " can lead to undesirable results, both because it can make disputes harder to resolve and because people holding such beliefs are more likely to get into conflicts to begin with. Over the past several decades, legal educators specializing in dispute resolution have worked hard to challenge that mindset. This task is not simple, for framing conflict in zero-sum terms has very deep cultural roots tracing back at least to the Biblical stories in …

A Special Approach To Mediation For Moslem Clients, Nadia Shahram

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The general saying "one size fits all" does not apply in the mediation setting. No mediation model advocates one strict approach for all mediations. In fact, each model offers a variety of styles to employ when working with clients, each with strengths applicable to specific situations. Mediators know how to adapt to the different circumstances of each client. They know that one size does not fit all.

Of Grids And Gatekeepers: The Socioeconomics Of Mediation, Robert Rubinson

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

Mediation scholars have long debated which mediator "style" or "model" is correct. The origin of the debate arises from a foundational piece of scholarship by Leonard Riskin. Riskin proposed a "grid" of mediator orientations comprised of what came to be known as "facilitative mediation" and "evaluative mediation." A more recent addition to the grid-and one that is almost universally recognized as a distinct model-is "transformative mediation." These three models are so embedded in the literature of mediation that they have been called "the big three."

This Article will survey these issues in three parts. First, it will offer an overview …

Is Courtesy No Longer Contagious, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Integrity Under Fire: The Wisdom Of General U.S. Grant And Advice For The Neophyte Lawyer, John W. Teeter Jr.

Faculty Articles

Law is not war. Indeed, litigation serves as a peaceful alternative to trial by battle, and our legal doctrines and procedures are designed to prevent society from disintegrating into a feral, sanguinary struggle of each against all. Furthermore, lawyers simply do not deserve to be likened to warriors, for we neither physically defend our nation from foreign aggression nor sacrifice our lives to preserve our principles and freedoms. Any attorney who engages in excessive battlefield rhetoric should be sentenced to bedpan duty at the local Veterans Administration hospital.

At the same time, however, anyone who has tried a case, negotiated …