Legal Profession Commons^™

Section On The Education Of Lawyers Remains Committed To Improving Legal Training, A. Benjamin Spencer

Popular Media

No abstract provided.

Social Media Policies For Character And Fitness Evaluations, Jessica Belle

Washington Journal of Law, Technology & Arts

In 2009, Florida became the first U.S. jurisdiction to articulate a Character and Fitness Evaluation (CFE) policy of examining the social media accounts of bar applicants who had demonstrated a history of questionable conduct such as substance abuse or seeking to violently overthrow the U.S. government. This policy may allow access to otherwise legally inaccessible data, which creates a risk of the bar unlawfully considering information protected by applicants’ constitutional rights. Over the past 60 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has split on whether bar organizations may constitutionally deny bar admission to applicants who refuse to answer certain questions on …

The Law School Critique In Historical Perspective, A. Benjamin Spencer

Faculty Publications

Contemporary critiques of legal education abound. This arises from what can be described as a perfect storm: the confluence of softness in the legal employment market, the skyrocketing costs of law school, and the unwillingness of clients and law firms to continue subsidizing the further training of lawyers who failed to learn how to practice in law school. As legal jobs become increasingly scarce and salaries stagnate, the value proposition of law school is rightly being questioned from all directions. Although numerous valid criticisms have been put forth, some seem to be untethered from a full appreciation for how the …

Defending Those People, Abbe Smith

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Many practitioners and scholars have written perceptively about the motivations of criminal defenders. Some have written eloquently. I have my own body of work on this and related questions.

This essay is about why the author has devoted her professional career--her life--to defending people most of society would just as soon banish and forget. After nearly thirty years of criminal law practice, her reasons are such a part of her that they are nearly inarticulable. The author is a criminal defender in her soul. She also has been teaching and writing about criminal defense for almost as long as she …

How To Think About Errors, Costs, And Their Allocation, Ronald J. Allen

Florida Law Review

There is an ongoing, robust debate about the structure of litigation, and in particular, about access to the courts. For a considerable period of time, the mantra that the courts should be readily available to all the people so that people may present claims that their rights have been violated has dominated academic discourse and has, perhaps, significantly influenced the structure of litigation. This conventional view—that the courts should be freely open to all—was dealt a blow by the Iqbal and Twombly decisions, which imposed greater gatekeeping responsibilities on the federal district courts. These decisions predictably provoked a storm of …

A Passion For Justice, Charles A. Reich

Touro Law Review

What makes a good judge or justice? The public has a need to know. But simplistic labels, such as "activist," "liberal" and "conservative," are both meaningless and misleading. Perhaps aformer law clerk can offer a different perspective.

I served with David J. Vann as law clerk to Justice Hugo L.Black during the momentous 1953 Term of the Supreme Court. This was the year when Brown v. Board of Education was decided. It was also the year when Chief Justice Vinson died and was replaced by the Governor of California, Earl Warren. And it was also a year in which the …

Reforming Lawyers Into Irrelevance?: Reconciling Crisis And Constraint At The Office Of Legal Counsel , Peter Margulies

Pepperdine Law Review

A Predator drone attack in Pakistan and the "enhanced interrogation techniques" that the Bush administration used on suspected terrorists have at least one thing in common: legal advice. While advice given the Obama administration on drones has received only a partial airing, disclosure that lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) authorized coercive interrogation after 9/11 has ignited a wide-ranging debate on reform and accountability. However, the volume of calls for reform has exceeded consideration of the competing values at stake. Some reformers stress the need to combat a climate of impunity with formal sanctions such as …

"You Had Me At Hello" Or "Let Them Go?": Law Firm Selection, Retention, And Defection In The Investment Banking Industry, Karl D. Shehu

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

Drawing upon the theoretical concepts of reputation and social networking, this article's main objective is to assess how investment banks choose external law firms. Using qualitative methods, I show that investment banks, to varying degrees, rely on internal counsel, procurement specialists, and boards of directors to decide which firm to select. When choosing a specific law firm for the first time, corporate decision-makers are likely to evaluate law firms based on intangible factors like reputation and the word-of-mouth referrals of their colleagues. In subsequent selections of a law firm, these factors are transplanted by past results. Firm expertise and cost …

Internships And The Making Of Future Lawyers, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As law firm internships provide law students with their first substantial encounters with lawyers, in situations where they are especially eager to impress, a project was undertaken to examine the impact of private law firm internships on the professional identities of future lawyers. Fifty-two volunteers from the Singapore Management University, which mandates 10 weeks of internships with approved partners, were surveyed. Most had done corporate or civil litigation work at local firms in Singapore. The findings of this research project were presented at the fifth International Legal Ethics Conference, held in Canada in July.

The Crisis Of The American Law School, Paul Campos

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The economist Herbert Stein once remarked that if something cannot go on forever, it will stop. Over the past four decades, the cost of legal education in America has seemed to belie this aphorism: it has gone up relentlessly. Private law school tuition increased by a factor of four in real, inflation-adjusted terms between 1971 and 2011, while resident tuition at public law schools has nearly quadrupled in real terms over just the past two decades. Meanwhile, for more than thirty years, the percentage of the American economy devoted to legal services has been shrinking. In 1978 the legal sector …

September 2012 Newsletter

Ergo

No abstract provided.

The Crisis In Legal Education: Dabbling In Disaster Planning, Kyle P. Mcentee, Patrick J. Lynch, Derek M. Tokaz

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

The legal education crisis has already struck for many recent law school graduates, signaling potential disaster for law schools already struggling with their own economic challenges. Law schools have high fixed costs caused by competition between schools, the unchecked expansion of federal loan programs, a widely exploited information asymmetry about graduate employment outcomes, and a lack of financial discipline masquerading as innovation. As a result, tuition is up, jobs are down, and skepticism of the value of a J.D. has never been higher. If these trends do not reverse course, droves of students will continue to graduate with debt that …

Training Lawyer-Entrepreneurs, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The Great Recession has caused many new attorneys to question their decisions to go to law school. The highly publicized decline in employment opportunities for lawyers has called into question the value of obtaining a law degree. The tightening of the economy has diminished the availability of entry-level jobs for law graduates across employment sectors. Large law firms are laying-off lawyers, bringing in smaller first year associate classes, hiring more contract and experienced lateral attorneys. Government entities and public interest organizations have suffered furloughs, and hiring freezes, and are relying more on volunteers than on new employees to get the …

Adopting Law Firm Management Systems To Survive And Thrive: A Study Of The Australian Approach To Management-Based Regulation, Susan Saab Fortney, Tahlia Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

In Australia, amendments to the Legal Profession Act require that incorporated legal practices (ILPs) take steps to assure compliance with provisions of the Legal Profession Act 2004. Specifically, the legislation provides that the ILP must appoint a legal practitioner director to be generally responsible for the management of the ILP. The ILP must also implement and maintain “appropriate management systems" to enable the provision of legal services in accordance with the professional obligations of legal practitioners. Because the new law did not define “appropriate management systems” (AMS) the Office of Legal Services Commissioner for New South Wales worked with representatives …

Internships And The Making Of Future Lawyers, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

As law firm internships provide law students with their first substantial encounters with lawyers, in situations where they are especially eager to impress, a project was undertaken to examine the impact of private law firm internships on the professional identities of future lawyers. Fifty-two volunteers from the Singapore Management University, which mandates 10 weeks of internships with approved partners, were surveyed. Most had done corporate or civil litigation work at local firms in Singapore. The findings of this research project were presented at the fifth International Legal Ethics Conference, held in Canada in July.

Search Committee Seeks To Appoint New Law Dean

Lauren Robel (2002 Acting; 2003-2011)

No abstract provided.

Search Committee Seeks To Appoint New Law Dean, Michelle Soko

Hannah Buxbaum (2011-2013 Interim)

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To Judge Lazer, Rena C. Seplowitz

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Leon Lazer: The Giant Among Us, Howard Glickstein

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Incomplete Protection: Exoneration Clauses In New York Trusts And Powers Of Attorney, Ilene S. Cooper, Robert M. Harper

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.