Legal Profession Commons^™

Ordinary Clients, Overreaching Lawyers, And The Failure To Implement Adequate Client Protection Measures, Leslie C. Levin

American University Law Review

Every year, thousands of individual clients are victimized by overreaching lawyers who overcharge clients, refuse to return unearned fees, or steal their money. For more than forty years, the American Bar Association (ABA) has considered, and often proposed, client protection measures aimed at protecting clients from overreaching lawyers. These measures include requirements that lawyers use written fee agreements in their dealings with clients and rules relating to fee arbitration, client protection funds, insurance payee notification, and random audits of trust accounts. This Article examines what happened to these ABA recommendations when the states considered them and assesses the current state …

The Search For Clarity In An Attorney’S Duty To Google, Michael Murphy

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Men And Women Of The Bar: A Second Look At The Impact Of Gender On Legal Careers, Kenneth G. Dau-Schmidt, Kaushik Mukhopadhaya

Articles by Maurer Faculty

A lot has happened in the time since our last study. Women have continued to improve their position in legal education and the legal profession. In 2009, women were 47% of first-year law students in American law schools and 31% of practicing lawyers. Women's enrollment in American law schools has steadily increased so that in 2018 they were the majority of firstyear law students (53.1%), and in 2019, they were the majority of all law students (51.3%). Correspondingly, with women's advantage in numbers in education, women's participation in the legal profession has continued to increase so that in 2019 they …

The Role Of Lawyers And Law Schools In Fostering Civil Public Debate, Jennifer K. Robbennolt, Vikram D. Amar

Connecticut Law Review

Partisanship can make policy discussion and civil debate difficult. Partisan differences in how facts and policies are understood contribute to the escalation of conflict and a lack of cooperation. Lawyers are not immune from these human tendencies. But good lawyers have, and good law schools teach, values, knowledge, and skills that can aid in fostering and modeling more productive debate and resolution of conflict.

Lawyers are trained and socialized to internalize and safeguard the foundational tenets of our constitutional democracy, to uphold the law even when it does not reflect their own individual preferences. The professional rules of conduct encourage …

A Podcast Of One’S Own, Leah M. Litman, Melissa Murray, Katherine Shaw

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

In this short Essay, we discuss the lack of racial and gender diversity on and around the Supreme Court. As we note, the ranks of the Court’s Justices and its clerks historically have been dominated by white men. But this homogeneity is not limited to the Court’s members or its clerks. As we explain, much of the Court’s broader ecosystem suffers from this same lack of diversity. The advocates who argue before the Court are primarily white men; the experts cited in the Court’s opinions, as well as the experts on whom Court commentators rely in interpreting those opinions, are …

Random Thoughts On Access To Justice In Idaho, Anne-Marie Fulfer

Articles

No abstract provided.

Is The Legal Profession Too Independent?, Limor Zer-Gutman, Eli Wald

Marquette Law Review

Faced with mounting pressure to permit national law practice and increase

access to legal services for those who cannot afford to pay for them and

critiques about growing inequality and its failure to lead the battles for greater

gender and racial justice, the legal profession’s response has been to resist

reform proposals by invoking its independence. Lawyers and lawyers alone,

asserts the profession, ought to determine the pace and details of nationalizing

law practice, set the conditions under which nonlawyers and artificial

intelligence can offer legal services, and respond to growing inequality among

lawyers and concerns about the role lawyers …

Duress In Immigration Law, Elizabeth A. Keyes

Seattle University Law Review

The doctrine of duress is common to other bodies of law, but the application of the duress doctrine is both unclear and highly unstable in immigration law. Outside of immigration law, a person who commits a criminal act out of well-placed fear of terrible consequences is different than a person who willingly commits a crime, but American immigration law does not recognize this difference. The lack of clarity leads to certain absurd results and demands reimagining, redefinition, and an unequivocal statement of the significance of duress in ascertaining culpability. While there are inevitably some difficult lines to be drawn in …

Spirit Of The Corporation, Russell Powell

Seattle University Law Review

Christian theologians have analyzed the productive and destructive qualities of institutions, sometimes attributing to them human virtues and vices. In City of God, Saint Augustine describes a utopian vision of human community within a Christian context as an alternative to the flawed “City of Man.” Contemporary theologians and sociologists have described collective structures of human behavior in institutions as having a kind of “spirit” analogous to the individual human “spirit.” Institutions are then assumed to take on an existence separate from the individuals within them, and in fact, the “spirit” of an institution influences the behavior of individuals. In The …

The Virginia Company To Chick-Fil-A: Christian Business In America, 1600–2000, Joseph P. Slaughter

Seattle University Law Review

The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. is one of its most controversial in recent history. Burwell’s narrow 5–4 ruling states that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 applies to closely held, for-profit corporations seeking religious exemptions to the Affordable Care Act. As a result, the Burwell decision thrust Hobby Lobby, the national craft chain established by the conservative evangelical Green family of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, onto the national stage. Firms like Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, however, reject the conventional wisdom Justice Ginsburg explained in Burwell and instead embrace an approach to business with …

Introductory Remarks, Michael Rogers, Hannah Hamley, Rayshaun D. Williams

Seattle University Law Review

Introductory Remarks.

Marissa Jackson Sow’S “Whiteness As Contract”, Marissa Jackson Sow

Seattle University Law Review

Marissa Jackson Sow’s “Whiteness as Contract.”

Closing Remarks, Dontay Proctor-Mills

Seattle University Law Review

Closing Remarks.

Rock And Hard Place Arguments, Jareb Gleckel, Grace Brosofsky

Seattle University Law Review

This Article explores what we coin “rock and hard place” (RHP) arguments in the law, and it aims to motivate mission-driven plaintiffs to seek out such arguments in their cases. The RHP argument structure helps plaintiffs win cases even when the court views that outcome as unfavorable.

We begin by dissecting RHP dilemmas that have long existed in the American legal system. As Part I reveals, prosecutors and law enforcement officials have often taken advantage of RHP dilemmas and used them as a tool to persuade criminal defendants to forfeit their constitutional rights, confess, or give up the chance to …

Tele-Lawyering And The Virtual Learning Experience: Finding The Silver Lining For Remote Hybrid Externships & Law Clinics After The Pandemic, Lucy J. Johnston-Walsh, Alison Lintal

Faculty Scholarly Works

The COVID-19 pandemic has rocked the world in innumerable ways. This Article argues that the COVID-19 pandemic has a silver lining for law students in experiential learning programs. The pandemic has forced law schools across the country to fully utilize remote learning technology. The pandemic similarly forced courts to accept virtual tools in an environment that had previously relied primarily on in-person appearances. The lessons that law faculty and judges have learned from the pandemic will be permanent and may change the methods of operation going forward. Law schools that embrace the lessons they learned can help their law students …

Inclusivity In Admissions And Retention Of Diverse Students: Leadership Determines Dei Success, Danielle M. Conway, Bekah Saidman-Krauss, Rebecca Schreiber

Faculty Scholarly Works

Penn State Dickinson Law has been leading with an Antiracist admissions philosophy and corresponding plans for implementation before the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Arguably, this approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)was not identified explicitly as a vision priority for the law school until July 2019, when Dickinson Law welcomed Danielle M. Conway as the first Black Dean and first woman Dean in the law school’s 186-year history. Dean Conway outlined four vision priorities to accomplish within her first five years at Dickinson Law. Vision priority number two calls upon the law school’s administrators to move the needle substantially on …

Asylum Attorney Burnout (Model Survey And Additional Survey Responses), Lindsay M. Harris, Hillary A. Mellinger

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Critical Interviewing, Laila L. Hlass, Lindsay M. Harris

Journal Articles

Critical lawyering—also at times called rebellious, community, and movement lawyering—attempts to further social justice alongside impacted communities. While much has been written about the contours of this form of lawyering and case examples illustrating core principles, little has been written about the mechanics of teaching critical lawyering skills. This Article seeks to expand critical lawyering theory, and in doing so, provide an example of a pedagogical approach to teaching what we term “critical interviewing.” Critical interviewing means using an intersectional lens to collaborate with clients, communities, interviewing partners, and interpreters in a legal interview. Critical interviewers identify and take into …

Asylum Attorney Burnout And Secondary Trauma, Lindsay M. Harris, Hillary Mellinger

Journal Articles

We are in the midst of a crisis of mental health for attorneys across all practice areas. Illustrating this broader phenomenon, this interdisciplinary Article shares the results of the 2020 National Asylum Attorney Burnout and Secondary Traumatic Stress Survey (“Survey”). Using well-established tools, such as the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Secondary Stress Trauma Survey, the Survey assessed the well-being of over 700 immigration attorneys navigating the tumultuous asylum space. As the largest such study of United States attorneys to date, it is particularly timely. Between 2017 and 2021, the Trump administration’s extreme policies, sweeping regulatory changes, and Attorney General …

Civil Rights, Access To Counsel, And Injunctive Class Actions In The United States, Maureen Carroll

Book Chapters

According to a familiar story about class actions in the United States, aggregation promotes access to counsel by increasing the amount of money from which counsel fees can be taken. Courts usually award class counsel a percentage of the monetary recovery obtained on behalf of the class, and class treatment can turn a $30 case into a $3 million case. But what about class actions that do not involve monetary relief at all? Some civil rights plaintiffs seek to stop a violation, rather than to obtain compensation for past harm, and therefore choose to pursue only an injunction or declaratory …