Legal Profession Commons^™

Rural Practice As Public Interest Work, Hannah Haksgaard

Maine Law Review

As the rural lawyer shortage continues to grow, rural states and communities must find new ways of attracting law students and graduates to rural practice. This Article explores incentives based on conceptualizing rural private practice as public interest work. Rural lawyers provide public interest lawyering through pro bono cases, mixed practices, community service, and even through providing fee-paid services in rural communities. The Article asserts that law schools and rural communities can capitalize on this view to recruit new lawyers and argues that federal loan forgiveness programs should be expanded to cover rural lawyers.

Foreword, Mac Walton Editor-In-Chief

Maine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Finding A Mentor In The Practice Of Law: An Empirical Inquiry, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

For many years the University of Michigan Law School has surveyed its graduates after they have been out of law school five, fifteen, twenty-five, thirty-five and forty-five years. This paper about finding mentors focuses on Michigan Law School alumni surveyed five years after graduation during the sixteen year period between 1985 and 2000 and particularly on those who have ever worked in a private law firm, a setting in which it is commonly believed that having a mentor is critical for a young lawyer’s success.

Our central findings are these: Among alumni who had worked in a law firm within …

The Increasing Reliance On Educational Loans By University Of Michigan Law School Graduates, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

Among graduates of the University of Michigan Law School in the classes of 1970 through 1979, about half borrowed to pay for their college or legal education. By the early 1980s the portion who borrowed had risen to about 80 percent and has remained at that level through the classes of early twenty-first century. Even greater growth has occurred in the average debt of those who incurred debt. In actual dollars, average debts among those with debt have increased twenty-fold from the 1970s to the early 2000s. Even in CPI-adjusted dollars, average debts have tripled. By the classes of 2000-2001, …

The Effects Of Educational Debts On Career Choices Of Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School began an annual survey of selected classes of its graduates. Beginning in the early 1980s, annual surveys of those five and fifteen years after law school included questions about educational debts incurred during college and law school as well as about career plans at the beginning and end of law school and actual job held in the years since law school. This paper, written in 2009, examines the possible effects of debts on career decisions and job choices made before, during and after law school by the graduating classes of 1976 through …

Retirement, Partial Retirement, And Working Into Old Age: Michigan Law School Graduates 45 Years Out Of Law School, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

In 1966, the University of Michigan Law School began an annual survey of selected classes of its graduates. For the first few decades of the survey, only the graduating classes five and fifeen years out of law school were included in the survey. Beginning in 1997, graduates 25, 35, and 45 years out of law school were added. This memorandum focuses primarily on surveys conducted between 1997 and 2006 of the living graduates of the classes of 1952 through 1961, who had by then been out of law school for 45 years. After 45 years, the great majority were 69 …

Women And Men Graduates Of The University Of Michigan Law School: Career Patterns And Adjustments For Children, David L. Chambers

Bibliography of Research Using UMLS Alumni Survey Data

The University of Michigan Law School conducted mail surveys of classes of its alumni each year from 1966 and 2006. This memorandum builds upon the mail surveys conducted through 2006 and in particular survey questions asked about the sex of the respondent, the settings in which they have worked since law school, the hours they work and their earnings in their current settings, whether they have children and the various adjustments they have made in order to care for children, such as working part-time or leaving the work force altogether for periods of time. The memorandum has two principal focuses: …

August 2019 Newsletter

Ergo

No abstract provided.

Advocating For Children With Disabilities In Child Protection Cases, Joshua B. Kay

Articles

Children with disabilities are maltreated at a higher rate than other children and overrepresented in child protection matters, yet most social service caseworkers, judges, child advocates, and other professionals involved in these cases receive little to no training about evaluating and addressing their needs. Child protection case outcomes for children with disabilities tend to differ from those of nondisabled children, with more disabled children experiencing a termination of their parents' rights and fewer being reunified with their parents or placed with kin. They also tend to experience longer waits for adoption. Furthermore, the poor outcomes that plague youth who age …

Turning Points In The History Of St. Mary’S University School Of Law (1980–1988), Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Law Journal

St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio, Texas has existed for nearly a century. Thus far, there have been seven important written histories of St. Mary’s University School of Law, but no one has yet attempted to write a comprehensive history of the law school, nor have any members of the faculty published autobiographies. Having taught law at St. Mary’s since 1982, Professor of Law Vincent R. Johnson shares his first-hand account about the life of the law school during most of the 1980s (specifically 1980 to 1988). That period encompasses the bulk of the deanship of James …

Law Library Blog (August 2019): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Mandatory Legal Malpractice Insurance: Exposing Lawyers' Blind Spots, Susan S. Fortney

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The legal landscape for lawyers’ professional liability in the United States is changing. In 2018, Idaho implemented a new rule requiring that lawyers carry legal malpractice insurance. The adoption of the Idaho rule was the first move in forty years by a state to require legal malpractice insurance since Oregon mandated lawyer participation in a malpractice insurance regime. Over the last two years, a few states have considered whether their jurisdictions should join Oregon and Idaho in requiring malpractice insurance for lawyers in private practice. To help inform the discussion, the article examines different positions taken in the debate on …

Judicial Ethics: A New Paradigm For A New Era, Charles G. Geyh

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

As the preamble to the Model Code of Judicial Conduct indicates, traditional notions of judicial ethics operate within a rule of law paradigm, which posits that the “three I’s” of judicial ethics—independence, impartiality, and integrity—enable judges to uphold the law. In recent decades, however, social science, public opinion, and political commentary suggest that appointed judges abuse their independence by disregarding the law and issuing rulings in accord with their biases and other extralegal impulses, while elected judges disregard the law and issue rulings popular with voters, all of which calls the future of the three I’s and judicial ethics itself …

Connecting Prospective Law Students' Goals To The Competencies That Clients And Legal Employers Need To Achieve More Competent Graduates And Stronger Applicant Pools And Employment Outcomes, Neil W. Hamilton

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

The author’s chapters in the 2018 professional responsibility hornbook, Legal Ethics, Professional Responsibility, and the Legal Profession, discuss the new data available to help law faculties and students understand the competencies that clients and legal employers want. The foundation for many of these competencies—like ownership over continuous professional development and the relational competencies with clients and teams—is the student’s professional identity or moral core. But students need help to understand these connections.

We have seen some very useful new data over the last few months that will help build bridges among the three major stakeholders in legal education: the …

The Fiduciary Obligations Of Public Officials, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

At various levels of government, the conduct of public officials is often regulated by ethical standards laid down by legislative enactments, such as federal or state statutes or municipal ordinances. These rules of government ethics are important landmarks in the field of law that defines the legal and ethical obligations of public officials. Such provisions can form the basis for the kinds of government ethics training that helps to minimize wrongful conduct by public servants and reduces the risk that the performance of official duties will be clouded by appearances of impropriety. Codified government ethics rules also frequently provide mechanisms …

“The More Things Change, The More They Remain The Same:” Lawyer Ethics In The 21st Century, Gregory C. Sisk

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

At an accelerating pace since the recession, our legal profession has been undergoing structural changes in the delivery of many legal services. At the same time, longstanding principles of ethics continue to govern the day-to-day lives of practicing lawyers.

This article lays out four examples of how meaningful change in lawyer practice has been accomplished since the turn-of-the-century with continued adherence to bedrock professional concepts. First, the rules now embrace the multi-jurisdictional practice of law, while the disciplinary authority of each jurisdiction is emphatically confirmed and strengthened. Second, rules on lawyer advertising are streamlined to grant largely open-ended permission for …

Minding The Gaps In Lawyers' Rules Of Professional Conduct, Anita Bernstein

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Making The Modern American Legal Profession, 1969–Present, Michael Ariens

St. Mary's Law Journal

The American legal profession has changed dramatically over the past half-century greatly due to the solution and problem of “scale.” This was most noticeable after the American Bar Association’s adoption of the Code of Professional Responsibility. The reputation of lawyers and the legal community would continue to evolve in the eyes of the public. As such, the demand for lawyers and large law firms who had the capacity and means to handle such vast and varied issues would present itself. The increasing demand from large law firms over the years led to unprecedented growth and impact to the way in …

Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The Gender Gap For Securities And Exchange Commission Attorneys, Stephen J. Choi Ii, Mitu Gulati, Adam C. Pritchard

Articles

Most research on the gender gap in the legal profession focuses on the private sector. We look at the gender gap in a setting where one might expect the gaps to be smaller: the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which has a reputation for providing employees with good childcare and work flexibility. We find a substantial gender gap in assignments but only a modest one in pay. Men are also more likely to move laterally and more likely to move to lucrative private-sector jobs. What causes these gaps? The primary explanation for the gender gap …

Strangers In The Law: Lawyers' Law And The Other Legal Dimensions, Mauro Bussani

Cardozo Law Review

Political and legal theories have long been takingfor granted the idea that law is the province of government and government recognized authorities, including the judiciary. They have concentrated on the processes and principles, by which the form and substance of State law are determined, implemented, and enforced. This law is what I will call official or State law. By contrast, many non-official sites of legal production have always existed and still exist (outside and) inside the West. These sites produce rules that may flourish indifferent to or in opposition to official law and take the settlement of disputes arising out …