Legal Profession Commons^™

Revised Aba Standard 303: Curricular, Pedagogical, And Substantive Questions, Steven W. Bender

Seattle University Law Review Online

ABA accreditation standards now require law schools to provide education and training on racism, bias, and cross-cultural competence. This seemingly straightforward mandate raises numerous questions as schools plan for and implement compliance. Here, I articulate and approach these compliance questions using insights drawn from critical theory—which supplies helpful guidance for responses and ultimately antiracism legal education that is more than minimalist. Armed with critical insights, lawyers are better equipped to contribute to the struggle to eradicate systemic social ills in law and society.

Artificial Intelligence And Legal Malpractice Liability, Vincent R. Johnson

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.

Rumpole And The Dissatisfied Client: Lessons On Justice From Four Case Studies In Client Objectives V. Lawyer Means, Thomas N. Bulleit, Esq.

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

Fictional barrister-at-law Horace Rumpole is a skillful, tenacious, and even fearsome courtroom advocate for his criminal defense clients. He cares deeply about winning. But Rumpole departs from the stereotypical heroes and antiheroes of fictional courtroom drama in that he typically complies fully with the ethical constraints on advocacy and the truth-finding process. When Rumpole does occasionally stumble, it is in the other direction: by losing track of his client, and presenting often unwanted truths to elevate victory above other needs or interests that the client considers just as, or sometimes much more, important than a favorable verdict.

Using several of …

Cyber Security: A Lawyer’S Ethical Duty, Meagan Folmar

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

No abstract provided.

Maurer School Of Law Names New Assistant Dean For Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion, James Owsley Boyd

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

Dr. Gabriel Escobedo has been appointed the Law School’s inaugural assistant dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Escobedo has strong ties to Indiana University, earning his Ph.D. in Anthropology of Performing Arts and Latinx Culture from the university in 2023. He was an assistant instructor in IU’s Department of Anthropology from 2013-15.

“Gabriel will be a strong leader for our DEI efforts, and we’re excited to welcome him and his family back to Bloomington,” Maurer School of Law Dean Christiana Ochoa said. “His experience and success working collaboratively with a wide range of stakeholders at Michigan Technological University stood out …

The Futures Of Law, Lawyers, And Law Schools: A Dialogue, Benjamin H. Barton, Sameer M. Ashar, Michael J. Madison, Rachel F. Moran

Scholarly Works

On April 19 and 20, 2023, Professors Bernard Hibbitts and Richard Weisberg convened a conference at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law titled “Disarmed, Distracted, Disconnected, and Distressed: Modern Legal Education and the Unmaking of American Lawyers.” Four speakers concluded the event with a spirited conversation about themes expressed during the proceedings. Distilling a lively two days, they asked: what are the most critical challenges now facing US legal education and, by extension, lawyers and the communities they serve? Their agreements and disagreements were striking, so much so that Professors Hibbitts and Weisberg invited those four to extend their …

Business Lawyer Leadership: Valuing Relationships, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

Business lawyers are surrounded by relationships because of the nature of their work. Businesses are relational; business associations law is relational; business lawyering is relational. Business lawyering, in all its manifestations, is a practice steeped in the lawyer’s awareness and management of, as well as their participation in, the layered sets of relationships found in businesses and business associations law. This article recognizes these important connections between business law practice and relationships. It approaches each of them in turn. The substantial take-away is that a business lawyer can best lead by understanding the inherent value of relationships to business lawyering …

How Do You Represent ‘Those People?’, Neil Fulton

Loyola University Chicago Law Journal

No abstract provided.

The Case For (And Against) Aba Regulation Of Non-J.D. Programs, Benjamin H. Barton

Scholarly Works

American law schools have pulled out of what looked like a death spiral. From 2008-18 job placement and bar passage cratered and applications and JD enrolment followed. Some law schools found themselves trapped between Scylla and Charybdis – if they did not loosen admissions, they would not have the funds to keep the doors open. But if they loosened admissions too much bar passage and placement suffered, prompting a possible closure via disaccreditation by the ABA (or the DOE).

There are (broadly speaking) two models of profitable higher education in the United States. The first is the old school, classic …

Aba Standard 303(C) And Divisive Concepts Legislation And Policies: Challenges And Opportunities, Sherley Cruz, Becky L. Jacobs, Karen L. Tokarz, Kendall Kerew, Andrew King-Ries, Carwina Weng

Scholarly Works

This article by six clinicians discusses the challenges and opportunities of new ABA Standard 303 (c), including the implications of and interactions between Standard 303(c) and “divisive concepts” laws and other threats to representation, academic freedom, and free speech in legal education. The article also highlights the intersection of Standard 303(c) and Standard 303(b)(3), which addresses professional identity formation; discusses opportunities to adapt current curriculum and teaching and create new curricular responses to meet the new accreditation standards and interpretations; and explores ways to resist increasing limitations and find a supportive academic community to sustain hope and resilience.

Representing Elon Musk, Joan Macleod Heminway

Scholarly Works

What would it be like to represent Elon Musk on business law matters or work with him in representing a business he manages or controls? This article approaches that issue as a function of professional responsibility and practice norms applied in the context of publicly available information about Elon Musk and his business-related escapades. Specifically, the article provides a sketch of Elon Musk and considers that depiction through a professional conduct lens, commenting on the challenges of representing or working with someone with attributes and behaviors substantially like those recognized in Elon Musk.

Ultimately (and perhaps unsurprisingly, for those who …

Tapping Into The Talent Pipeline While Repairing The Leaky Pipe, Michelle M. Kwon

Scholarly Works

Diversity in the legal profession matters. It helps legitimize our legal system, giving everyone confidence that they will be treated fairly. Diverse legal teams make it more likely that the team will understand different perspectives and avoid “group think.” Having diverse groups make, enforce, and interpret laws leads to better outcomes. And yet, the legal profession is one of the least diverse in the country. The vast majority of lawyers are White men even though women constitute half of the population and about 40% of the U.S. population is not White. The percentage of Black lawyers has remained virtually unchanged …

A Bibliography Of University Of Nebraska College Of Law Faculty Scholarship 2019-2023, Stefanie S. Pearlman, Genesis M. Agosto

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

This bibliography lists faculty scholarship from 2019-2023. It updates "A Bibliography of University of Nebraska College of Law Faculty Scholarship 1892–2013" and "A Bibliography of University of Nebraska College of Law Faculty Scholarship 2014-2018." This bibliography includes publications from law, law library, and law clinical faculty. It also includes assistant deans, directors, faculty with courtesy appointments at the College of Law, and visiting faculty teaching at the College of Law for three or more years. Although we did not include the scholarship of faculty who visited for less than three years or adjunct faculty, we did include a list of …

The Role Of Intuitive Reasoning In Lawyering And Legal Education, N. E. Millar

St. Thomas Law Review

Intuition-a process of "rapid cognition" that offers foresight and helps with creative problem-solving-is a powerful tool that lawyers can use to inform strategic decisions, avoid ethical pitfalls, enhance communication, and increase career satisfaction. However, many law students come to law school after decades of being taught to trust only external sources-such as data and authority figures-and out of touch with their internal, intuitive resources. Law schools exacerbate this disconnect by prioritizing grades, awards, rankings, prestigious jobs, and other external sources of satisfaction and meaning. Indeed, the study of law is primarily the study of external sources of guidance, such as …

A History Of Corporate Law Federalism In The Twentieth Century, William W. Bratton

Seattle University Law Review

This Article describes the emergence of corporate law federalism across a long twentieth century. The period begins with New Jersey’s successful initiation of charter competition in 1888 and ends with the enactment of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. The federalism in question describes the interrelation of state and federal regulation of corporate internal affairs. This Article takes a positive approach, pursuing no normative bottom line. It makes six observations: (1) the federalism describes a division of subject matter, with internal affairs regulated by the states and securities issuance and trading regulated by the federal government; (2) the federalism is an …

Stakeholder Capitalism’S Greatest Challenge: Reshaping A Public Consensus To Govern A Global Economy, Leo E. Strine Jr., Michael Klain

Seattle University Law Review

The Berle XIV: Developing a 21st Century Corporate Governance Model Conference asks whether there is a viable 21st Century Stakeholder Governance model. In our conference keynote article, we argue that to answer that question yes requires restoring—to use Berle’s term—a “public consensus” throughout the global economy in favor of the balanced model of New Deal capitalism, within which corporations could operate in a way good for all their stakeholders and society, that Berle himself supported.

The world now faces problems caused in large part by the enormous international power of corporations and the institutional investors who dominate their governance. These …

Henderson And The Objective Observer Standard: The Future Of Race-Conscious Standards Post-Students For Fair Admissions, Gabriela Dionisio

Seattle University Law Review

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court of the United States decided Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down race-conscious admissions policies. Within just a year after its ruling, Students for Fair Admissions has already had a sweeping impact, reaching beyond higher education. Although the Supreme Court did not indicate whether Students for Fair Admissions applies to sectors beyond higher education, law firms, and other employers have already modified their diversity policies and initiatives, erasing race and company diversity considerations. Given those dramatic changes, there is growing fear that Students for Fair Admissions …

Same Crime, Different Time: Sentencing Disparities In The Deep South & A Path Forward Under The Fourteenth Amendment, Hailey M. Donovan

Seattle University Law Review

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. The American obsession with crime and punishment can be tracked over the last half-century, as the nation’s incarceration rate has risen astronomically. Since 1970, the number of incarcerated people in the United States has increased more than sevenfold to over 2.3 million, outpacing both crime and population growth considerably. While the rise itself is undoubtedly bleak, a more troubling truth lies just below the surface. Not all states contribute equally to American mass incarceration. Rather, states have vastly different incarceration rates. Unlike at the federal level, …

The Class Counsel Draft Gender Gap: An Analysis Of Class Counsel Applicants, Alissa Del Riego

Michigan Journal of Gender & Law

This Article accomplishes three important and distinct objectives. First, it provides an updated window into the class counsel gender gap. Second, and most critically, it analyzes a to date unexamined data point—MDL class counsel applications. And third, based on its analysis of the data gathered, it demonstrates: (1) female class counsel application rates are correlated with appointment rates and (2) gender equal class counsel applicants’ success rate, suggesting courts are not discriminating against female class counsel applicants. Instead, the class counsel gender gap appears to be a product of the class counsel draft gender gap. To narrow the gap, more …

What Occupational Licensing Requirements Protect The Public? Evidence From The Legal Profession, Kyle Rozema

Grantee Research

I investigate the types of occupational licensing requirements that protect the public. To do so, I employ professional discipline as a measure of potential harm and exploit considerable state-level variation in distinctive licensing requirements for American lawyers. Using novel data from 34 states between 1984 and 2019, I find evidence suggesting that the only requirements that reduce harm are those that restrict entry for certain high-risk individuals. Even with these requirements, however, it takes over a decade following licensing for any noticeable reduction in harm to materialize, and the cumulative impact on harm reduction is small in absolute terms.