Legal Profession Commons^™

Progressive Prosecution Or Zealous Public Defense? The Choice For Law Students Concerned About Our Flawed Criminal Legal System, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article addresses a question asked by many law students concerned about our flawed criminal legal system: should they become a prosecutor in an office run by a progressive prosecutor, or a public defender in an office devoted to zealous, client-centered (or holistic) defense? The Article starts with an anecdote about Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s road show to recruit law students and young lawyers, and then proceeds as follows: First, this Article makes the case for progressive prosecution; then, it makes the case for zealous indigent defense; then, it identifies the obstacles and challenges for both kinds of lawyers …

Clinics, The Cloud, And Protecting Client Data In The Age Of Remote Lawyering, Andrew C. Budzinski

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Technology has become central to law practice. Attorneys have an ethical obligation to understand how that technology works, how it can facilitate client representation—and the risks it poses to the confidentiality of clients’ electronically-stored data. Law school clinics seem to fall behind the curve on this obligation. Some maintain outdated protocols, and some have no protocols at all, to manage and safeguard client data. This leaves client data less secure than it ought to be, risking harm to clients, ethical violations for attorneys, and missed opportunities to communicate the importance of ethical technology use to clinic students.

This Article offers …

John Osborn's Enduring Words On Law & Learning, Walter Effross

Popular Media

When I started my first year at Harvard Law School, 17 years after Osborn did, I wasn’t looking for enlightenment. But I expected to be — and was — intimidated by Socratic taskmasters who, like the movie version of Osborn’s Professor Kingsfield (a role for which John Houseman won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 1973), were ready with “always another question, another question to follow your answer.”

Building A Culture Of Scholarship With New Clinical Teachers By Writing About Social Justice Lawyering, Susan Bennett, Binny Miller, Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, Caroline Wick

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

This Article is a collection of essays about teaching social justice lawyering, as seen through the eyes of eight practitioners-in-residence in the clinical program at American University’s Washington College of Law (“WCL”). They include: Michelle Assad, Maria Dooner, Mariam Hinds, Jessica Millward, Citlalli Ochoa, Charles Ross, Anne Schaufele, and Caroline Wick. They teach in seven clinics, including the Civil Advocacy Clinic, the Criminal Justice Clinic, the Community Economic and Equity Development Clinic, the Disability Rights Law Clinic, the Immigrant Justice Clinic, the International Human Rights Law Clinic, and the Janet R. Spragens Federal Income Tax Clinic. We use the terms …

Trauma-Informed (As A Matter Of) Course, Natalie Netzel

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Law students are impacted by trauma and law professors are in a position to help by adopting a trauma-informed approach as a matter of universal precaution. The 2021 Survey of Law Student Well-Being (“SLSWB”) revealed that over twenty percent of responding law students meet criteria that indicate they should be evaluated for post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”). The study also revealed that almost fifty percent of responding students reported an important motivation for attending law school was experiencing a trauma or injustice. Put differently, law schools are full of law students who have experienced trauma, many of whom are actively struggling …

Unsettling Human Rights Clinical Pedagogy And Practice In Settler Colonial Contexts, Jocelyn Getgen Kestenbaum, Caroline Bishop Laporte

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

In settler colonial contexts, law and educational institutions operate as structures of oppression, extraction, erasure, disempowerment, and continuing violence against colonized peoples. Consequently, clinical legal advocacy often can reinforce coloniality—the logic that perpetuates structural violence against individuals and groups resisting colonization and struggling for survival as peoples. Critical legal theory, including Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), has long exposed colonial laws and practices that entrench discriminatory, racialized power structures and prevent transformative international human rights advocacy. Understanding and responding to these critiques can assist in decolonizing international human rights clinical law teaching and practice but is insufficient in …

Fifty Years Of Clinical Legal Education At American University Washington College Of Law: The Evolution Of A Movement In Theory, Practice, And People, Robert D. Dinerstein, Elliott S. Milstein, Ann C. Shalleck

American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law

Clinical legal education has evolved substantially in the fifty years since Elliott Milstein initiated the clinical model at American University Washington College of Law (“WCL”) that, notwithstanding numerous changes in program and personnel since that time, remains essentially in effect today. In this Article, we explore the theoretical, pedagogical, structural, programmatic, and personnel developments that have occurred during this period. We link these developments to broader developments within the national and international clinical legal education spheres. WCL’s Clinical Program, and its clinical faculty, have been leaders in shaping these developments, but, in the best clinical tradition, we have not done …

Reaching Out Through The Universal: The Powerful And Positive Role Of A Jesuit Catholic Law School On The Secular Line, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Touro Law Review

There are multiple ways in which Catholic law schools can provide an education that supports and reflects a Catholic vision. Some schools align more closely to an orthodox view in which text and doctrine are the starting lens. Catholic law schools closer to the secular end of the spectrum play a powerful role by actively building bridges with the secular world. These schools, either implicitly or explicitly, start with values framed in more universal terms -- a moral or ethical worldview that can implement the common good in the secular world. A Catholic law school that emphasizes the universal generally …

Disrupting Data Cartels By Editing Wikipedia, Eun Hee Han, Amanda Levendowski, Jonah Perlin

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Legal discourse in the digital public square is driven by memoranda, motions, briefs, contracts, legislation, testimony, and judicial opinions. And as lawyers are taught from their first day of law school, the strength of these genres of legal communication is built on authority. But finding that authority often depends on a duopoly of for-profit legal research resources: Westlaw and Lexis. Although contemporary legal practice relies on these databases, they are far from ethically neutral. Not only are these “data cartels” expensive-- creating significant access to justice challenges--they also are controlled by parent companies that profit by providing information to Immigration …

Dethroning Langdell, Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

I come not to bury the case method. I come merely to dethrone it. While the case method’s monopolistic hold on the law school classroom has loosened somewhat in recent years, it is still the dominant approach to pedagogy in many law school classrooms—and especially in the first-year law student experience. That is also true of the case method’s traditional pedagogical partners, the Socratic method and the cold call: their dominance has declined somewhat, even while they still have remarkable staying power.

This Essay identifies one fault with our continued acquiescence to these pedagogical mainstays of law school classrooms: it …

Creating Shared Understanding: Preparing Students For A Modern Client Base, Jaclyn Celebrezze, Mireille Butler

Presentations

The Legal Writing Institute hosted a series of one-day workshops at various law schools, including at CWRU, where the theme of the workshops was "Preparing Students for the Modern Practice of Law." This presentation discusses how to prepare students for a modern, globalized client base, and provides tips and tools to help create a shared understanding between clients and future practitioners.

Law School Rankings And The Impossibility Of Anti-Racism, Rory D. Bahadur

St. Mary's Law Journal

This Article uses the U.S. News law school rankings to illustrate how powerful, invisible, and stubborn systemic racism is. This Article does not level allegations of intentionally blameworthy conduct at U.S. News, or any person or entity. More broadly, this Article does not address conscious and deliberate racism, or the examples of this type of racism with which America’s history is replete. Nor is this Article attempting to undervalue the significant impact of deliberately racist actions in American history on the economic disparity between white people and people of color.

Instead, I make an untrue assumption: All Americans of every …

Teaching Case Theory, Binny Miller

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

As the key means of framing a case, case theory is the central problem that lawyers confront in constructing a case, and many of the decisions made during the life of a case are decisions that rest on case theory. Building on the author's earlier scholarship on case theory, this essay articulates a concept of case theory called "storyline," and sets out a framework for teaching this concept. The framework for this process has three basic stages - imagining case theory, evaluating (and constructing) case theory, and choosing case theory. The material for this process is stories, which are the …

The Black-White Paradigm’S Continuing Erasure Of Latinas: See Women Law Deans Of Color, Laura M. Padilla

Faculty Scholarship

The Black-white paradigm persists with unintended consequences. For example, there have been only six Latina law deans to date with only four presently serving. This Article provides data about women law deans of color, the dearth of Latina law deans, and explanations for the data. It focuses on the enduring Black-white paradigm, as well as other external and internal forces. This Article suggests how to increase the number of Latina law deans and emphasizes why it matters.

The Foundational Skill Of Reflection In The Formation Of A Professional Identity, Neil W. Hamilton

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

There is a growing scholarly literature on the professional development and formation of law students into the core values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.* This growing scholarly literature can guide effective curriculum development to foster student growth toward later stages of development on these learning outcomes. This Article focuses on the skill of reflection as one of the most effective curricular strategies to foster each student’s growth toward later stages of these learning outcomes. This same curricular strategy will also be effective in engaging practicing lawyers to grow toward these same goals. Part II …

Protecting The Guild Or Protecting The Public? Bar Exams And The Diploma Privilege, Milan Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The bar examination has long loomed over legal education. Although many states formerly admitted law school graduates into legal practice via the diploma privilege, Wisconsin is the only state that recognizes the privilege today. The bar examination is so central to the attorney admissions process that all but a handful of jurisdictions required it amidst a pandemic that turned bar exam administration into a life-or-death matter.

This Article analyzes the diploma privilege from a historical and empirical perspective. Whereas courts and regulators maintain that bar examinations screen out incompetent practitioners, the legal profession formerly placed little emphasis on bar examinations …

Reflections On Law Student Mental Health By A Dean Of Students After 25 Years, David Jaffe

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Your faculty need to be educated about how to refer students, how to speak with students who pop into their office. Your Dean, writ-large nationally, Deans need to have the willingness, and again, the bravado, the willingness to go to the faculty and say, "You need to be part of this movement." Whatever that may mean. I would love to see every faculty member taking 30 seconds at the beginning of every class for students to breathe. Thirty seconds of breathing. If you've never done it, do it at home today, deep breaths, and see what it feels like. I …

"It's Okay To Not Be Okay": The 2021 Survey Of Law Student Well-Being, David Jaffe, Katherine M. Bender, Jerome Organ

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Survey of Law Student Well-Being, implemented in Spring 2014 [hereinafter "2014 SLSWB"], was the first multi-law school study in over twenty years to assess alcohol and drug use among law students, and it was the first multi-law school study ever to address prescription drug use, mental health, and help-seeking attitudes. The article summarizing the results of the 2014 SLSWB has been downloaded over 12,000 times.

With a desire to learn what has changed since 2014 given the increased emphasis on law student and lawyer well-being among law schools and legal professionals, the authors sought and received grant funding from …

Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman Interview; Oral History Project, Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman, Cristina E. Salazar, Shelby Nivitanont

Wyoming Oral History

Jacquelyn L. Bridgeman, Kepler Professor of Law, Director of School of Culture, Gender & Social Justice.

In this oral history, Professor Bridgeman discuses what it was like to grow up in Laramie, WY, her experience as a woman of color in the legal career field, and her accomplishments as a lawyer, law professor, and magistrate. Professor Bridgeman touches on stories from when President Obama was her professor at University of Chicago Law School, insights into current events in the Wyoming Legislature, and her perspective on diversity recruitment.

Pipeline Programs At Iu Maurer School Of Law, Austen Parrish, Terrance Blackman Stroud

Austen Parrish (2014-2022)

In this guest column, Indiana Lawyer invited us to discuss some of the initiatives occurring at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law that help recruit talented and diverse students. Terrance Stroud, ‘03, a dedicated alumnus who has played a key role in helping establish several diversity pipeline programs for the law school, joins me in this column.

Aba Employment Summary Class Of 2022, University Of Tennessee College Of Law

ABA Disclosures

No abstract provided.

Teaching Theranos, Priya Baskaran

Tennessee Law Review

The story of Theranos and disgraced CEO Elizabeth Holmes highlights numerous missed opportunities for effective intervention by corporate counsel. In particular, the lawyers at Theranos served as weak gate-keepers who were easily steamrolled by a power-drunk entrepreneur. The dominant business law pedagogy contributes to this problem by emphasizing litigation mitigation as the primary function of corporate lawyers. This framing improperly minimizes the role and influence of transactional attorneys to the detriment of all involved. Law Professors can change this narrative through much needed pedagogical innovation. Currently, any innovation in business law courses centers on the incorporation of drafting and other …

Lawmaking Without Law: How Over Reliance On Economics Fails Financial Regulation (And What To Do About It), Steven L. Schwarcz, Theodore L. Leonhardt

American University Law Review

This Article examines a fundamental failure of process in lawmaking: the overreliance of lawmakers on economists and economic scholarship when designing and implementing financial regulation, to the virtual exclusion of lawyers and legal scholarship. This overreliance leads to regulation that often is based on theoretical models and assumptions that are poorly informed by experience and may not withstand real-world testing. The Article examines how to improve financial regulation by better integrating legal scholarship and lawyerly insights into the lawmaking process. Among other things, that will require law professors to gain the attention, and earn the respect, of lawmakers by writing …

Educating Robot-Proof Attorneys, Tammy Oltz

Faculty Scholarship

Technology, particularly that powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), is disrupting the legal profession. In the coming years, lawyers who do not understand technology will face both ethical and professional risks. This year, the duty of technological competence marks its tenth anniversary. While lawyers are still learning what the duty means and what it will mean in the future, one thing is certain: those who ignore it could find themselves at risk of being on the wrong side of an ethics violation.

However, even without that regulatory obligation, lawyers who continue to ignore the current technological revolution put themselves at risk …

Robert Cover’S Call To Teaching And Journey To Judaism, Randy Lee

Touro Law Review

As a teacher, Yale law professor Robert Cover never “dazzled,” “zinged,” nor “entertained”; he just engaged his students on a journey to the real and true that ultimately invited them to become the best version of themselves. As a Jew, Professor Cover wore an oversized skull cap, covered himself in a multicolored prayer shawl, and studied from a huge Talmud. He also, however, made everyone around him feel valued and welcomed and swept them up in a faith Professor Cover saw as wondrous and life-changing. This essay considers what the life of Robert Cover can teach us about what it …

Exploring Race And Racism In The Law School Curriculum: An Administrator's View On Adopting An Antiracist Curriculum, Amy Gaudion

Faculty Scholarly Works

This article provides a candid assessment of the demanding, and rewarding, work that is required to put into action the written words of institutional support for implementing an Antiracist curriculum. This article starts by describing the two Penn State Dickinson Law faculty resolutions that committed the faculty to condemn racism and bias against our Black and Brown brothers and sisters, while committing to teach and learn according to Antiracist pedagogy and best practices. It then describes the resolve to become Antiracist teachers, discusses the investments in curricular policy and reform, and details the bureaucratic processes to accomplish the following: adding …

Book Review Of Shaping The Bar: The Future Of Attorney Licensing, Marsha Griggs, Andrea A. Curcio

All Faculty Scholarship

In Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing, Professor Joan Howarth issues a clarion call to the academy, the legal community, and the judiciary to reform the way we license lawyers in the United States. In this book Howarth identifies the current crisis in law licensing, the history of racism that created this crisis, and the tools available to address it. Shaping the Bar challenges our entrenched notions of professional identity, and it forces us to confront vulnerabilities in attorney self-regulation. It does so in a manner that will stir even those not immersed in the current debate about …

Introducing Students To Ethics And Professionalism Challenges In Virtual Communication, Carol Morgan, Katherine M. Koops, James E. Moliterno, Carol Newman

Scholarly Works

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 …

Testing Privilege: Coaching Bar Takers Towards “Minimum Competency” During The 2020 Pandemic, Benjamin Afton Cavanaugh

The Scholar: St. Mary's Law Review on Race and Social Justice

Abstract forthcoming.

Singapore: National Report For The Global Access To Justice Project, Tan K. B. Eugene

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Global Access to Justice Project is gathering the very latest information on the impact of the world’s major justice systems, analyzing legal, economic, social, cultural and psychological barriers that prevent or inhibit many, and not only the poor, from entering and using the legal system. The country report for Singapore follows the common framework provided by the Global Access to Justice Project Questionnaire.