Legal Profession Commons^™

Putting The Lawyer First: Framing Well-Being In Law As An Ethical Dilemma, Aric Short

Mercer Law Review

A disturbingly high percentage of our students continue to be unwell. In the most recent and comprehensive survey of law student well-being in 2021, almost 70% of law students responded that, in the past twelve months, they believed they needed to seek help for emotional or mental health problems. Embedded screening tools in the survey suggested that 34% of respondents were clinically depressed and 54% suffered from clinical anxiety. 44% of respondents reported being drunk in the past thirty days, 33% had engaged in binge drinking in the preceding two weeks, and 38% had smoked marijuana in the past twelve …

Reflections On Purpose And Professional Identity Formation, Harmony Decosimo

Mercer Law Review

I am very grateful to Professor Daisy Floyd for starting this important conversation about the role of purpose in professional identity formation, and for inviting me to participate in it. As I know my co-panelists agree, this is an important conversation not simply to us as lawyers, but as humans, trying to help each other figure out how to live good, meaningful lives.

I think what might be most useful in my response to Professor Floyd is to turn at least initially from the theoretical to the personal and practical by offering some insight into my own experience with purpose …

What About Us? How Law Schools Can Help Historically Underrepresented Law Students Develop Their Professional Identities, David A. Grenardo

Mercer Law Review

Talking about race, gender, and sexual orientation can be painful, messy, and difficult. This country’s history of discrimination and violence against historically underrepresented, marginalized, excluded individuals—racial and ethnic minorities, women, LGBTQIA+, those living with disabilities, the socioeconomically disadvantaged/lower class—makes these topics fraught with controversy and risk. We can easily offend someone accidentally when we try to address these topics even with the best of intentions. For example, some people may get nervous trying to figure out whether to use the words African-American, Black, BIPOC, person of color, or all of the above when discussing these topics and referring to someone …

Risk-Taking And Reform: Innovation For A Better Education, Megan M. Carpenter

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

No abstract provided.

Criminal Legal Reform In New Hampshire: One Law Professor's Activism, Albert E. Scherr

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Criminal legal reform is a perpetual work in progress. The system itself is, at best, maddeningly imperfect. It too often fails to produce anything close to justice. Structural problems afflict the system in a way that incarcerates too many people, particularly people of color. For example, over the last thirty years, the Innocence Project has demonstrated imperfections in the system caused by faulty eyewitness identification procedures by ineffective assistance of counsel, by prosecutorial misconduct, by shoddy forensic practices and by police behavior that produced false confessions.

That the United States has well over fifty-one independent criminal legal systems frustrates efforts …

Bridging The Paradigmatic Crevasse Between Lawyers And Scientists: The Need For New Institutional Models, Stanley P. Kowalski, Stanley Kowalski

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

The professions of science and law have traditionally been siloed paradigms, operating often in tandem with each other but rarely intersecting in the interdisciplinary pasture which separates them, a pasture from which an abundance of synergistic collaboration and ensuing creative concepts might sprout. However, the erstwhile never the twain shall meet situation is neither realistic nor even tenable in the current century, a century increasingly dominated by science, technology, invention, innovation, and intellectual property. Simply put, whereas lawyers are risk averse and build constructed realities to argue points and serve clients, scientists seek an objective assessment of truth and accept …

New And Useful Improvements: The Role Of Institutional Culture, Leadership, Incentives, And Regulation In 30 Years Of Legal Education Since The Maccrate Report, Greg Brandes

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

New and useful improvements – in the words of the patent statute – have emerged from legal education’s pursuit of seamlessly developing contributing members of the legal profession, as the 1992 MacCrate Report advocated. These include the widespread adoption of distance learning techniques for better teaching and assessment, course pedagogy that is more inclusive for students with diverse learning needs, and a new subset of the academy schooled and interested in the science of teaching and learning. But it has not been easy.

Efforts to improve legal education have sometimes foundered and other times flourished because of varying faculty and …

Putting The Lawyer First: Framing Well-Being In Law As An Ethical Dilemma, Aric Short

Faculty Scholarship

A disturbingly high percentage of our students continue to be unwell. In the most recent and comprehensive survey of law student well-being in 2021, almost 70% of law students responded that, in the past twelve months, they believed they needed to seek help for emotional or mental health problems. Embedded screening tools in the survey suggested that 34% of respondents were clinically depressed and 54% suffered from clinical anxiety. 44% of respondents reported being drunk in the past thirty days, 33% had engaged in binge drinking in the preceding two weeks, and 38% had smoked marijuana in the past twelve …

Breaking Down Siloes And Building Up Students: The Transformational Possibilities Of Professional Identity Formation, Lindsey P. Gustafson, Aric K. Short, Robin Thorner

Faculty Scholarship

Under the ABA’s sequenced approach to implementation of Standard 303(b)(3), schools should now have developed plans for providing opportunities for professional identity formation and should be implementing them. These plans must provide students with an “intentional exploration of the values, guiding principles, and well-being practices considered foundational to successful legal practice.” In addition, these plans should provide for frequent opportunities for development, “during each year of law school and in a variety of courses and co-curricular and professional development activities.”

Because Standard 303(b)(3) is necessarily tied to the unique character, existing
structures, and available resources of a law school, each …

Egypt’S Legal Modernism: Challenging The National Discourse, Mohamed A. El-Deeb

Theses and Dissertations

Egypt’s legal modernity is the story of the modern Egyptian state itself. Reforming the country’s judiciary in the late nineteenth century was meant to achieve ambitious aims beyond the functionality of a justice system. The utmost goal was the country’s independence from the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The judicial reforms modernized the Egyptian state and built a judiciary and legal community like no other place. Egypt achieved its independent judiciary before gaining its political independence. That was a remarkable achievement of the judicial reform. That rich part of Egypt’s modern history is negated and disregarded from public awareness. Not …

Fischman Elected To Defenders Of Wildlife Board, James Owsley Boyd

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

An environmental law professor at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law has been elected to the board of directors of a national conservation organization dedicated to the protection and restoration of imperiled species and their habitats in North America.

Rob Fischman, the George P. Smith, II Distinguished Professor of Law and an adjunct professor at the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, was elected to the Defenders of Wildlife board on Tuesday, May 21.

His teaching, research and service align closely with the organization’s conservation vision of a future where diverse wildlife populations in North America are secure …

Clark Memorandum: Spring 2024, J. Reuben Clark Law School, Byu Law School Alumni Association, J. Reuben Clark Law Society

The Clark Memorandum

• Facing Fear with Faith
• The Great Law(s) of Peace
• Grace in the Law School

Law School News: Rwu Graduates Encouraged To 'Be Fearless' And To Always 'Seek Knowledge', Mel Thibeault

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

School Of Law Commencement Exercises : Class Of 2024 : May 17, 2024, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Commencement (1996- )

No abstract provided.

Roger Williams University Commencement Exercises : Class Of 2024 : May 17, 2024, Roger Williams University

School of Law Commencement (1996- )

No abstract provided.

Bad Therapy: Conceptualizing The Teaching Of “Thinking Like A Lawyer” As Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Chelsea Baldwin

St. Mary's Law Journal

Law students and lawyers experience mental illness and substance abuse at higher rates than the general population and other learned professions. This is bad for an individual’s wellbeing as well as their clients and society because mental illness and substance abuse increases stress which in turn decreases effective decision-making and judgment, and in worst case scenarios leads to attrition as individuals choose death by suicide which has cascading social and economic impacts. This Article identifies practices in legal education that likely combine in a causal mechanism, although not a sole cause, to the higher rates of mental illness and substance …

Ethical Algorithms: Navigating Ai In Legal Practice For A Just Jurisprudence, Bree'ara Murphy, Rachel Gadra Rankin, Joseph Rios

Law Review Blog Posts

Exploring the professional obligations practitioners may face in light of developing AI technology by examining state and federal model rule language, current judicial treatment of AI, and AI best practices.

Law School News: Elisabeth D'Amelio Chosen As Class Of 2024 Graduate Student Commencement Speaker 5-14-24, Jordan J. Phelan

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Generative Artificial Intelligence And The Practice Of Law: Impact, Opportunities, And Risks, John Villasenor

Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology

No abstract provided.

Resurrection, Bassim Al Shaker

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Foreword, Caroline Faye Radell, Udhanth Mallasani

Northwestern Law Journal des Refusés

No abstract provided.

Law School News: Rwu Law Students Go Above And Beyond With Pro Bono 5-3-2024, Suzi Morales

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Beyond “Hard” Skills: Teaching Outward- And Inward-Facing Character-Based Skills To 1ls In Light Of Aba Standard 303(B)(3)’S Professional Identity Requirement, Marni Goldstein Caputo, Kathleen Luz

Brooklyn Law Review

Newly adopted American Bar Association Standard 303(b)(3) requires law schools to provide “substantial opportunities to students for . . . the development of professional identity” throughout their three-year legal education. For 1Ls, the ideal place to start this process is in their lawyering skills classrooms, which is our domain at Boston University School of Law. Professional identity exploration necessarily requires students to look inward and outward to reflect upon their own role in the legal system and how they interact with others. In our classrooms, we divide what have been referred to as “soft” skills into two distinct categories—outward-facing and …

Ethics In Law And The Effects On Mental Health: An Interview Study, Kaitlyn Nyffeler

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

On August 2, 1983, The American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct were adopted by the House of Delegates. This set of rules provides legal professionals with the guidance needed to uphold the rule of law and to preserve justice. In this set of rules, lawyers learn the duties of confidentiality, client relations, diligence, and the overall conduct owed to the courts. Furthermore, these duties can be demanding and oftentimes challenging. Therefore, this study examined the different ethical rules as they apply to lawyers and how these demands can impact their mental health. Interviews were conducted with six lawyers …

2024 School Of Law Commencement Information And Photographs, Roger Williams University School Of Law

School of Law Commencement (1996- )

No abstract provided.

Law Library Blog (May 2024): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

A Model Of Evidence-Based Practice For Law Schools To Improve System Outcomes, Chance Meyer

St. Mary's Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Expectation V. Reality: Practical Problems With The Right Of First Refusal As A Defense Against Eminent Domain, Aerin Christensen

BYU Law Review

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. New London, many states enacted new laws to protect property owners from eminent domain. One possible defense for property owners is a statutory right of first refusal. In theory, this is a common-sense protection that ensures that if property is not needed for a public use, it is returned to the original owner. Unfortunately, in practice a right of first refusal is not always an effective protection for property owners.

The plaintiff’s experience in the Utah case Cardiff Wales, LLC v. Washington County School District demonstrates Utah’s statutory …

Law School News: Leadership And Vision: Jonte T. Mckenzie L'24, Michelle Choate

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Preliminary Injunctions Prevail Through The Winter Of Buckhannon, Kaitlan Donahue

Northwestern University Law Review

The Civil Rights Attorney’s Fees Awards Act of 1976 allows courts to award attorneys’ fees to the “prevailing party” in any “action or proceeding” enforcing several civil rights-related statutes. Yet, this statute fails to define the term “prevailing party,” leaving the courts to define it over time. The Supreme Court’s piecemeal, vague definitions of “prevailing party” have only complicated the legal landscape and caused more uncertainty for potential plaintiffs and their prospective attorneys. Without the relief offered by recovery of attorneys’ fees, private litigants may be dissuaded from pursuing meritorious litigation due to overwhelming costs of representation, and attorneys may …