Legal Profession Commons^™

Conduct Yourself Accordingly: Amending Bar Character & Fitness Questions To Promote Lawyer Well-Being, Janet Stearns, David Jaffe

Articles

No abstract provided.

In Times Of Chaos: Creating Blueprints For Law School Responses To Natural Disasters, Jeffrey Baker, Christine Cerniglia, Davida Finger, Luz Herrera, Jonel Newman

Articles

No abstract provided.

Professional Liability, Evan A. Kirkham, Hayden M. Baker, Tyler C. Wright

SMU Annual Texas Survey

No abstract provided.

Book Review Essay: Jewish And American Law: A Comparative Study. (Vols. 1 And 2) By Samuel J. Levine, Marie A. Failinger

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Jewish Lawyers And The U.S. Legal Profession: The End Of The Affair?, Eli Wald

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revising Boilerplate: A Comparison Of Private And Public Company Transactions, Stephen J. Choi, Robert E. Scott, G. Mitu Gulati

Faculty Scholarship

The textbook model of commercial contracts between sophisticated parties holds that terms are proposed, negotiated and ultimately priced by the parties. Parties reach agreement on contract provisions that best suit their transaction with the goal of maximizing the joint surplus from the contract. The reality, of course, is that the majority of the provisions in contemporary commercial contracts are boilerplate terms derived from prior transactions and even the most sophisticated contracting parties pay little attention to these standard terms, focusing instead on the price of the transaction. With standard-form or boilerplate contracts, this dynamic of replicating by rote the terms …

Trauma-Informed Advocacy: Learning To Empathize With Unspeakable Horrors, Susan Ayres

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Goodbye To Concurring Opinions, Meg Penrose

Faculty Scholarship

Modern Supreme Court opinions are too long. They are too fractured. And they often lack clarity. Separate opinions, particularly concurring opinions, are largely to blame. Today’s justices are more inclined to publish separate opinions than their predecessors.The justices do not want to read lengthy briefs but appear willing to publish lengthy opinions. Yet the justices owe us clarity. They should want the law to be understandable—and understood. In hopes of achieving greater legal clarity, this article calls for an end to concurring opinions.

The modern Court writes more separate opinions than past courts. It is becoming far too common that …

New Brunswick Needs A Public Inquiry Into Systemic Racism In The Justice System: Nova Scotia Shows Why, Naiomi Metallic

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

No abstract provided.

Folk Hero Or Legal Pariah? A Comment On The Legal Ethics Of Edgar Schmidt And Schmidt V Canada (Attorney General), Andrew Flavelle Martin

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In Schmidt v Canada (Attorney General), government lawyer Edgar Schmidt sought a declaration that the Department of Justice and the Minister of Justice were misinterpreting legislation requiring the Minister to inform the House of Commons if government bills are inconsistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Schmidt was one of the lawyers who made recommendations under that legislation. Schmidt thus presents an unusual case study in legal ethics: what should, or can, a lawyer do when a client rejects the lawyer’s advice? What if the client is the government, and the advice is about fundamental rights? This …

Evidence, Rollie Thompson

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

“Evidence” is what, in our adversary system, the parties attempt to place before the neutral factfinder in order to prove their case (or disprove their opponent's case). We follow the principle of party-presentation: parties determine what specific items of evidence are offered for proof, while the impartial judge or decision maker will determine which items are “admissible” evidence, in accordance with principles of law. At the end of the trial or hearing, the fact-finder (jury, judge, tribunal, decision maker) will determine which of those admissible items of evidence are believed or not, in formulating “fact-guesses” or “findings of fact”.

Constitutional Law, Jodi Lazare

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

The materials below are the study outlines from the July 2020 and January 2021 Bar Examinations. The materials are not intended to provide legal advice, and should not be relied upon by articled clerks, transfer applicants, lawyers or members of the public as a current statement of the law.

Please note: The Bar Review Materials are updated every three years. They were last updated on May 1, 2020.

How Law Schools Are Encouraging Students To Go In-House, Michele Gorman

Reuben Mark Initiative for Organizational Character and Leadership

While speaking to Columbia Law School students, a former Con Edison general counsel shared a pro tip from her in-house career: It's up to corporate counsel to first understand the company's needs, and then help the business achieve those goals.

The Federal Law Clerk Hiring Pilot And The Coronavirus Pandemic, Carl Tobias

Law Faculty Publications

Just when law students attained a comfort level with the arcane intricacies of the federal law clerk employment process, as increasingly exacerbated by the second year of an experimental hiring pilot plan, the coronavirus attacked the country and has been ravaging it ever since. To date, the virus has inflicted the most profound harm on the jurisdictions that comprise all of the “coastal elite circuits” that span the District of Columbia north to Maine, as well as the United States Courts of Appeals for the Seventh and Ninth Circuits, which apply the pilot. This piece examines impacts that the coronavirus’ …

Digging Into Algorithms: Legal Ethics And Legal Access, Carla L. Reyes, Jeff Ward

Faculty Scholarship

The current discussions around algorithms, legal ethics, and expanding legal access through technological tools gravitate around two themes: (1) protection of the integrity of the legal profession and (2) a desire to ensure greater access to legal services. The hype cycle often pits the desire to protect the integrity of the legal profession against the ability to use algorithms to provide greater access to legal services, as though they are mutually exclusive. In reality, the arguments around protecting the profession from the threats posed by algorithms represent an over-fit in relation to what algorithms can actually achieve, while the visions …

A Survey Of Legal Ethics Education In Law Schools, Laurel S. Terry

Faculty Contributions to Books

This book chapter, which was published in 2000, provides an overview of legal ethics education in U.S. law schools. Since 1974, legal ethics instruction has been required in law schools by the major accrediting body for law schools. The methods by which this require­ment has been satisfied vary, but the result is a much richer ethics literature than existed previously and a variety of approaches to the topic. This book chapter begins with an overview of the regulation of U.S. lawyers. The second section discusses the history of the legal ethics course requrirement. This section includes data from surveys published …

The Politics Of Lawyer Regulation: The Case Of Malpractice Insurance, Leslie C. Levin

Faculty Articles and Papers

This Article examines the politics of lawyer regulation and considers why some states will adopt lawyer regulation that protects the public, when others will not. It uses the debates over how to regulate uninsured lawyers as a lens through which to examine the question. Clients often cannot recover damages from uninsured lawyers who commit malpractice, even when those lawyers cause serious harm. Yet only two states require that lawyers carry malpractice insurance. This Article uses case studies to examine the ways in which six states recently have addressed the issue of uninsured lawyers to understand this regulatory failure. It uses …

Contributions To The Intellectual Life Of The Institution And The Profession, Janet Sinder

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Ai Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money!, Ashley M. London

Law Faculty Publications

AI systems are powerful technologies being built and implemented by private corporations motivated by profit, not altruism. Change makers, such as attorneys and law students, must therefore be educated on the benefits, detriments, and pitfalls of the rapid spread, and often secret implementation of this technology. The implementation is secret because private corporations place proprietary AI systems inside of black boxes to conceal what is inside. If they did not, the popular myth that AI systems are unbiased machines crunching inherently objective data would be revealed as a falsehood. Algorithms created to run AI systems reflect the inherent human categorization …

Contracts: An Eight-Factor Test For Quantum Meruit Compensation For A Dismissed Contingency Fee Counsel—Faricy Law Firm, P.A. V. Api, Inc. Asbestos Settlement Trust, 912 N.W.2d 652 (Minn. 2018), Mitch Ohiwa

Mitchell Hamline Law Review

No abstract provided.