Legal Profession Commons^™

Law School News: Rwu Law Ranked #11 Nationally For Most Graduates In Public Interest Law Careers 4-15-2025, Helga Melgar

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Better Than He Found It 4-24-2025, Danna Lorch, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Destined For Law: From Legal Dream To Valedictorian 05-13-2025, Jane Govednik

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Ben Crump And Racialized Professionalism, Katherine A. Macfarlane

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Benjamin “Ben” Crump is the country’s most influential civil rights lawyer. His advocacy led to the arrest and prosecution of George Zimmerman. He has represented the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and many others, negotiating record-breaking settlements despite a body of civil rights precedent that is overwhelmingly pro-defendant. Crump is also a modern lawyer who uses press conferences and social media to advance his clients’ cause. To his clients, he is a lawyer, confidante, and friend. Yet, based on the way national media covers him, his significance isn’t always clear. When his work isn’t being erased, it’s …

Barred From The Profession, Mischaracterized As Unfit By Law, Julia Mizutani

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

There is growing recognition that the bar examination can have racial and social effects when determining who can be an admitted and barred attorney in the United States. This Essay explores the history and current racialized issues with the other portion of bar admission—the character and fitness process. The simultaneously rigid and fluid definition and subjective enforcement of “good moral character” is only one example of how the law continues to reproduce and maintain racial and class hierarchy by creating barriers to entry. This Essay does not come to any direct conclusions or specific solutions. This Essay is a …

The Gatekeepers: How State Bar Associations' Disciplinary Process Is Racialized And Classist, Brooke Girley, Jonathan Barry-Blocker

St. John's Law Review

(Excerpt)

Modern U.S. legal ethics and attorney regulations exist for three ostensible goals: to protect clients from unprofessional lawyers, to compel ethical performance from all licensed attorneys, and to safeguard the legal profession’s freedom to self-regulate. However, a recent study conducted by the California Bar Association revealed attorney regulation is more racialized and classist than these objectives suggest. The study explored attorney disciplinary action and found significant disparities in probation and disbarment along race and class. Put simply, the Bar functioned more to police the “other” than to protect the rights of consumers and the profession. These disparities are not …

The Form Doesn’T Know Anything: A Response To Chowdhury, Chudkowski & Gulati, Glenn D. West

University of Miami Law Review

Merger and acquisition agreements differ significantly from sovereign bonds. While I have criticized the stubborn persistence of harmful or ineffective boilerplate in the M&A deal world, this persistence does not stem from a desire for uniformity or blind adherence to a sacred form. The dynamics involved in negotiating merger and acquisition agreements often dictate that comments on a form agreement be kept to a minimum, making the improvement of the form a secondary goal. Moreover, what one party considers bad boilerplate may be seen as beneficial by another. Many of the myths supposedly debunked by Chowdhury, Chudkowski & Gulati may, …

The Form Knows Best, Tara Chowdhury, Faith Chudkowski, Mitu Gulati

University of Miami Law Review

Law students learn that contracts are carefully negotiated, precisely drafted, and shaped by doctrine. But lawyers tell a different story. This article compares six pillars of contract law with what we heard in over 170 interviews with senior transactional lawyers across M&A, sovereign bonds, and leveraged loans. The result is a gap between the Official Story taught in classrooms and the Unofficial Story told by practitioners—where boilerplate dominates, case law is rarely consulted, and market custom often prevails over efficient design. We suggest that many contract provisions are better understood as historical artifacts: products of inherited forms and production pressure. …

Cardozo Law News Brief: May 9, 2025, Benjamin N. Cardozo School Of Law

Cardozo Law News Brief 2025

Highlights from the May 9, 2025 Cardozo Law News Brief include:

• Professor Britta Redwood was selected for the 2025 Harvard/Stanford/Yale Junior Faculty Forum.

• Alumnus Jaime Leggett ’10 appeared on the SPARKS podcast to discuss his legal career.

• Professor Peter Markowitz was quoted in The New York Times on immigration enforcement.

• Professor Jessica Roth appeared on CNN to discuss jury selection in the Diddy trial.

• Other faculty news includes speaking events and editorial work by Professors Codrington, Zelinsky, and Drucker-Albert.

Law Library Blog (April 2025): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Kathleen Macandrew, Erin Orsini

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Antiracist Development Institute Workshop At Rwu School Of Law May 5, 2025, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Rising Leaders In Justice: Celebrating Rwu Law's Class Of 2025 Honorees 05-07-2025, Jane Govednik

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Chatgpt Didn’T Write This . . . Or Did It? The Emergence Of Generative Ai In The Legal Field And Lessons From Mata V. Avianca, James H. Curlin Iv

Arkansas Law Review

It’s no secret: Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), for better or worse, is revolutionizing the world. The legal field and legal education at large are not immune to this explosion of possible uses for AI technology. However, as with any technological advancement, AI and Generative Language Models bring with them many challenges, including the implications of their use. One such challenge was vividly presented in the case of Mata v. Avianca, often referred to as “The ChatGPT Case.” Mata is a cautionary tale of the potential missteps that can trip up the unwitting user who naively relies on the lofty promises of …

Lawyers, Trauma, And Professional Well-Being: How The Legal Community Takes Back Its Mental Health, Brenda D. Gibson

Arkansas Law Review

Accompanying a notable shift in the legal academy to being more attentive to our students’ mental health, there must be an equal (or even greater) shift to focusing on trauma, mental health, and well-being in the broader profession. Significantly, trauma and its effects are compounded when combined with the challenges faced by underrepresented populations within the profession. To date, these challenges have been greeted by an ad hoc, piecemeal reaction to stress and trauma,10 which only inhibits wellness in the profession. Part I explores the current literature in both the humanities and the legal profession, beginning with a brief discussion …

Washington State Bar Licensure Task Force Subcommittee On Ethics/Character Fitness Report And Recommendations, Brent Williams-Ruth

Seattle University Law Review Online

The Washington State Bar Licensure Task Force’s Subcommittee on Ethics/Character and Fitness (the Subcommittee) was created at the behest of Brent Williams-Ruth, the representative selected by the President of the Washington State Bar Association (WSBA or the Bar) to represent the Board of Governors on the Bar Licensure Task Force. His interest in modifying the Character and Fitness process took root after meeting Tarra Simmons during her experience with the Character and Fitness Board. After the WSBA Character and Fitness Board recommended that Simmons’s application to sit for the bar exam be denied, the Washington Supreme Court reversed that recommendation …

Buxbaum Elected To Ajil Editorial Board, James Owsley Boyd

Keep Up With the Latest News from the Law School (blog)

Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Hannah L. Buxbaum has been elected to the American Journal of International Law’s Board of Editors.

She will serve a four-year term running through April 2029.

The AJIL is a leading peer-reviewed journal, published quarterly since 1907, that serves as the flagship publication of the American Society of International Law.

No Lawyer, No Jail: A Critical Case Study Of Pragmatism And The Flaws Of “Purposeful” Decision Making In Argersinger V. Hamlin, Alisa Smith, Sarah K. Stice

Seattle University Law Review

By releasing conference notes and internal communications, Supreme Court Justices provide insight into the otherwise private decisionmaking process, shedding light on how case outcomes and legal reasoning are framed and negotiated. The watershed case of Argersinger v. Hamlin (1972) extended the constitutional right to counsel to some, but not all, misdemeanor defendants. The case was argued twice, and the Court relied on empirical and authoritative sources to answer complex and practical questions about requiring counsel. This case study employs critical discourse analysis to uncover what influenced the Justices’ decisions and how they framed, shaped, and constructed social realities to foreground …

Modern Day Colonialism Through HawaiʻI’S Quiet Title And Partition Laws, Cheyann Fujii

Seattle University Law Review

This Note will attempt to highlight important aspects of Hawaiian history to provide readers with a clear picture on how Native Hawaiians are still impacted by colonialism, specifically when plaintiffs bring a quiet title or partition action against Native Hawaiian owners of kuleana lands. Before colonization, the concept of private land ownership did not exist in Hawai‘i, and Native Hawaiians adopted a feudal system by dividing land into geographical areas. Missionaries and businessmen brought Western ideas to Hawai‘i and influenced legislation such as the Great Māhele and the Kuleana Land Act of 1850, which solidified the concept of private property. …

Data Advantage And Merger Review: Can Entrenchment Theory Reform Antitrust Enforcement?, Shin-Ru Cheng

Seattle University Law Review

A merger involving giant digital companies is likely to dampen competition, as it allows those companies to combine and control data access, enabling them to entrench their dominant positions in relevant markets and extend those positions into related markets. While competition law in many jurisdictions aims to prohibit mergers that may substantially lessen competition or create a monopoly, arguably the review of digital mergers is failing because antitrust agencies lack an effective approach to identify data-generated anticompetitive harms. This Article demonstrates that entrenchment theory, recently reintroduced in the 2023 U.S. Merger Guidelines, would help reform the process of antitrust enforcement. …

Defining Deference: Impacts Of Abandoning Chevron On Emerging Technology Governance And Administrative Law, R. Aubrey Davis Iii

Seattle University Law Review

Emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI), often lead to unforeseen legal outcomes. Notable abuses in areas such as facial recognition, employment bias, and housing discrimination are well known. However, legislative responses to these issues either have been largely reactive or there has been no legislative response at all. In lieu of legislation, agencies have sought to fill the gap. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed a rule mandating voter notification for all AI-generated political phone calls citing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 as authority. However, the TCPA was originally passed to curtail telemarketing, not …

Table Of Contents, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Table of Contents

Caution: Potholes In E-Scooter Data Collection, Dakota Rakestraw

Seattle University Law Review

Lime scooters keep ending up in major waterways in Washington state metro areas, a testament to the ubiquity of e-scooters in the metropolitan landscape. How they get there is unclear. Why they get there is even murkier. Perhaps the answer lies in the implications of modern geolocation data collection through e-scooters and gaps in current data collection regulation curbing individual liberties.

Since September 2020, electric scooters have run Seattle’s streets and have dramatically overtaken ridesharing bike trips. For example, from September 2020 to September 2021, there were about 1.4 million scooter and bike trips with September 2021 seeing 300,000 scooter …

Machinists Preemption In The New Administrative Law, Andrew J. Ziaja

Seattle University Law Review

This Article assesses Machinists preemption—a labor-specific form of implied field preemption—while freshly considering implications both for and of new developments in administrative law. The radical transformation of administrative law in the Supreme Court, particularly its newfound emphasis on clear-statement rules, provides opportunities to reconsider the Machinists rationale. Aligning with scholars who have called to question the doctrine’s “ossifying” influence on labor and employment policy, it argues that the modern-day version of Machinists preemption clashes with the Supreme Court’s newly constrained view of delegated power and its differing conceptions of the major questions doctrine.

On the other hand, Machinists preemption might …

Volume 48 Masthead, Seattle University Law Review

Seattle University Law Review

Volume 48 Masthead

The Race To Erase: Destruction Of Government Documents Undermines Freedom-Of-Information Laws, Frank D. Lomonte

Seattle University Law Review

In August 2019, reporters with Chattanooga’s daily newspaper, the Times Free Press, filed what seemed to be a routine request for access to emails and other public records held by their local county government. The seemingly unremarkable request set the newspaper’s staff on a months-long journey of unpleasant surprises. The first was a demand to pay the county $717 in advance before being allowed to inspect the documents. The second was that—during prolonged haggling over the fee assessment— the county attorney’s office simply destroyed almost all of the disputed records. Third, and most glaringly, the journalists discovered that Tennessee law …

When You’Re Arrested For A Felony In Seattle, You’Ll Meet Me., Austin Field

Seattle University Law Review

In this Essay, Austin Field, a practicing public defender, uses a first-person perspective to describe what it is like to meet a criminal defendant for the first time. He explains the process from start to finish, detailing everything from the way he introduces himself to how bail works.

"I’ll ask you for your name. Most of the time, you tell me. I check your name against my list. On any given day I’m supposed to interview between five and fifteen people. I have a lot of questions for you. We only have about ten minutes."

The Public Square In A Private-Property Obsessed Country: What New York City’S Pops Regulations Get Right And Why Other Cities Should (Mostly) Copy Them, Carson Mcgregor

Seattle University Law Review

When New York City (NYC) was first becoming the metropolitan monolith it is today, it had a problem: the city streets were chock full of skyscrapers, and sunlight, air, and usable open space were at a premium. In response, the City promulgated its first Privately Owned Public Spaces (POPS) regulations, which allowed developers to build skyward in exchange for providing public space on the street level. Unfortunately, in July of 2023, the New York Times (NYT) discovered that New Yorkers received only a fraction of what they were promised. Building owners received billions of dollars’ worth of added floor space, …

Intellectual Property Or Modern Folklore? The Problem With Open Gaming Licenses In Tabletop Gaming, Rosie Midget

Seattle University Law Review

This Note addresses how courts and legislatures should address “Open Gaming Licenses” commonly attached to tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), which game publishers use to promote a false image of accessibility—misleading consumers and building goodwill from the misunderstanding. Part I discusses what TTRPGs are, including the defining features of the hobby and culture surrounding it, as well as the unique interplay between publishers and players. Part II explores the question of which elements in a TTRPG system may be subject to copyright protection. Part III examines these elements in practice using Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG as a …

Let It Flow: Information Exchange In Video Conferences Versus Face-To-Face Meetings, Hadar Y. Jabotinsky, Roee Sarel

Connecticut Law Review

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, policymakers faced a seemingly difficult choice. On the one hand, health considerations required imposing restrictions on face-to-face meetings. On the other, intuition suggested that switching to video conferencing might lead to information loss. As the pandemic progressed, in-person meetings largely turned digital, including court hearings, lawyer-client consultations, board meetings, and more. But did this turn actually cause an information loss?

Figuring out whether information is lost in video conferences is pivotal not only as a reflection on the pandemic but also to determine how to move forward in a post-pandemic world. In particular, identifying whether …

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2025, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Primary and Professional Identity
• Never Only Two Sides
• In Defense of Zion and Her People
• The Pursuit of Happiness