Legal Profession Commons^™

A Commons In The Master’S House, Daniel Farbman

Fordham Law Review

Almost everyone who reads these words is an institutional insider in some form. Those of us who aspire toward transformation, liberation, and resistance from our institutional settings are forced to confront Audre Lorde’s striking admonition that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” For some, finding themselves in the master’s house is a spur towards purism—a rejection of institutional power in search of a “pure” remove from which to critique it. For others, it is a dispiriting check on their aspirations and an invitation to sullen fatalism. This Essay questions whether we are bound to the hard consequences …

Progressive Prosecutors Are Not Trying To Dismantle The Master’S House, And The Master Wouldn’T Let Them Anyway, Paul Butler

Fordham Law Review

The first thing to note about Audre Lorde’s famous phrase “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” is that it cannot literally be true. If tools can dismantle the master’s house, the master’s own tools would be good as anyone’s. The main problem would not be that the tools don’t work, but rather how to get them to the people who most need the master’s house dismantled—the enslaved ones. But the considerable work that the phrase does in social justice movements and critical theory is figurative rather than literal. It is usually intended as a rebuke of liberal …

Pamodzi Hotels Plc V Rosemary Nyangu Appeal No.15 Of 2011 (Zmsc) 2021, Natasha Chibuye, Mwami Kabwabwa

SAIPAR Case Review

No abstract provided.

Lawyering The Presidency, Deborah Pearlstein

Articles

Among its many profound effects on American life, the Trump presidency has triggered a surge of interest in the project of law reform to better check the exercise of presidential power. Yet these reform efforts arise against a wholly unsettled debate about the function and effectiveness of existing checks, perhaps none more so than the role of executive branch legal counsel. With courts often deferential, and Congress hamstrung by partisan polarization, scholars have drawn on the experiences of executive branch lawyers to assess whether counsel functions as part of an “internal separation of powers” form of constraint. Yet while these …

The Exclusion Of Public Legal Education From Mandatory And Aspirational State Pro Bono Service Requirements, Amy Wallace

Articles & Chapters

Pro bono service is embedded in legal education and practice. Every year, lawyers and law students across the United States engage in countless hours of pro bono service. There are over 1.3 million lawyers in the country and more than one hundred thousand law students enrolled in law school. Lawyers perform an average of thirty-seven hours of pro bono work each year. They reference several factors that motivate them to perform this work but the desire to help people in need ranks highest. Professional duty is also listed as an important factor for lawyers choosing to perform pro bono work. …

Reflections On Law Student Mental Health By A Dean Of Students After 25 Years, David Jaffe

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Your faculty need to be educated about how to refer students, how to speak with students who pop into their office. Your Dean, writ-large nationally, Deans need to have the willingness, and again, the bravado, the willingness to go to the faculty and say, "You need to be part of this movement." Whatever that may mean. I would love to see every faculty member taking 30 seconds at the beginning of every class for students to breathe. Thirty seconds of breathing. If you've never done it, do it at home today, deep breaths, and see what it feels like. I …

"It's Okay To Not Be Okay": The 2021 Survey Of Law Student Well-Being, David Jaffe, Katherine M. Bender, Jerome Organ

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

The Survey of Law Student Well-Being, implemented in Spring 2014 [hereinafter "2014 SLSWB"], was the first multi-law school study in over twenty years to assess alcohol and drug use among law students, and it was the first multi-law school study ever to address prescription drug use, mental health, and help-seeking attitudes. The article summarizing the results of the 2014 SLSWB has been downloaded over 12,000 times.

With a desire to learn what has changed since 2014 given the increased emphasis on law student and lawyer well-being among law schools and legal professionals, the authors sought and received grant funding from …

Evaluating Legal Needs, Luz E. Herrera, Amber Baylor, Nandita Chaudhuri, Felipe Hinojosa

Faculty Scholarship

This article is the first to explore legal needs in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas––a region that is predominantly Latinx and has both rural and urban characteristics. There are few legal needs assessments of majority Latinx communities, and none that examine needs in areas that are also U.S. border communities. Access to justice studies often overlook this area of the U.S. and this segment of the population despite their unique qualities. Latinos are projected to constitute the largest ethnic group in the country by 2060, making it imperative that we study access to justice-related assets, needs, opportunities, and barriers …

Infusing Leadership Competencies Into 1l Professional Identity Formation, Aric Short

Faculty Scholarship

Law schools across the country are beginning to address the growing need to incorporate leadership training into their curricula; however, very few explicitly cover leadership in the 1L year. This article argues for the value of providing leadership training to 1Ls as part of a required course on professional identity formation. Because foundational leadership concepts overlap in meaningful ways with core lawyering competencies, such integration is both practical and efficient. Beginning leadership in the 1L year allows law schools to build on that foundational material in later clinics, externships, upper-level classes, and other experiences, creating deeper leadership skills in their …

Teaching And Assessing Active Listening As A Foundational Skill For Lawyers As Leaders, Counselors, Negotiators, And Advocates, Lindsey P. Gustafson, Aric Short, Neil W. Hamilton

Faculty Scholarship

Our students will be more effective leaders, counselors, negotiators, and advocates as they deepen their ability to actively listen. As a professional and interpersonal skill linked closely with a lawyer’s success, our students’ ability to listen should demand our attention as legal educators. This attention is worth the effort because studies indicate active listening is not a static ability: we can teach students to be better listeners. But “active listening” is missing from most law schools’ learning outcomes or curricula, or it is only included as an undefined element of effective communication. Consequently, it is a critical lawyering skill that …

The Gender Pay Gap And High-Achieving Women In The Legal Profession, Milan Markovic, Gabrielle Plickert

Faculty Scholarship

Although women have made significant strides in the legal profession, female attorneys continue to earn far less than male attorneys. Relying on survey data from a large sample of full-time attorneys in Texas, we find a gender pay gap of thirty-five thousand dollars at the median that cannot be explained by differences in human capital or occupational segregation. We also provide evidence that the legal market especially disadvantages women who excel in law school. Whereas high academic achievement boosts male lawyers’ incomes substantially, it does not have the same effect on female lawyers’ incomes. High-achieving female lawyers earn less than …

When We Fight, We Win: Eviction Defense As Subversive Lawyering, Eloise Lawrence

Fordham Law Review

This Essay will examine the “sword and shield” model in action to explore the meaning of “subversive lawyering” in the housing context, particularly in eviction defense. In this model, we—the lawyers and law students— provide the “shield” (i.e., legal defense), while the organizers and members of grassroots housing justice organizations provide the “sword” (i.e., public pressure and protest). The lawyers are shielding tenants and foreclosed homeowners in the courts, which allows these “defendants” to simultaneously work with organizers to take necessary extralegal actions to ensure they are protected from displacement.

Racial Allies, Atinuke O. Adediran

Fordham Law Review

Racial allies are white individuals and institutions that actively work to dismantle systems of racial inequality and the consequences of poverty that disproportionately impact communities of color and that are willing to both confer and share power with members of subjugated groups. There is no other sector of the legal profession that professes to be racial allies more than individuals and institutions within the public interest law sector. Yet, these institutions that address structural racism and disproportionately serve communities of color appear not to share power with racial and ethnic minorities. The public interest law sector has been at the …

From Pandemic To Pedagogy: Teaching The Technology Of Lawyering In Law Clinics, Sarah R. Boonin, Luz E. Herrera

Faculty Scholarship

The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the nation’s approach to work and learning. Law schools, law firms, courts, and administrative agencies abruptly closed their offices and quickly reimagined how to perform their daily functions remotely. Many of these institutions have plans to maintain aspects of remote operations and services post-pandemic. With this in mind, the authors of this Article conducted a survey of law school clinical faculty during the winter of 2021 to better understand how clinicians pivoted their instruction and practice using technology during the pandemic. The authors use the survey results to show how the COVID-19 experience positions clinical …

Aba Model Rule 8.4(G), Discriminatory Speech, And The First Amendment, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

The ABA adopted Model Rule 8.4(g), which targets certain speech and conduct that are based on “race, sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status or socioeconomic status.” In particular, according to the accompanying comment, Rule 8.4(g) reaches speech that is “derogatory and demeaning” or that “manifests bias or prejudice towards others” and is “harmful” (including, presumably, emotionally harmful). This rule targets a significant amount of speech that would be constitutionally protected if it were uttered by a nonlawyer. This article argues that there is no justification for treating lawyers differently from others in many …

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden, Gregory W. Bowman, Brooklyn Crockton

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Limits Of Law And Ai, Ryan Mccarl

University of Cincinnati Law Review

For thirty years, scholars in the field of law and artificial intelligence (AI) have explored the extent to which lawyers and judges can be assisted by computers. This Article describes the medium-term outlook for AI technologies and explains the obstacles to making legal work computable. I argue that while AI-based software is likely to improve legal research and support human decision making, it is unlikely to replace traditional legal work or otherwise transform the practice of law.

Peran Notaris Terhadap Ketidakpastian Hukum Dalam Proses Perubahan Anggaran Dasar Perkumpulan Berbadan Hukum (Studi Putusan Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara Jakarta Nomor 216/G/2020/Ptun-Jkt), Alisha Nur Laili

Indonesian Notary

Notaris merupakan pihak yang diberikan kuasa oleh para penghadap untuk mengajukan perubahan anggaran dasar dalam sistem administrasi badan hukum. Salah satu persyaratan utama untuk mengajukan perubahan anggaran dasar perkumpulan berbadan hukum adalah pernyataan perkumpulan sedang tidak dalam sengketa kepengurusan atau sengketa di pengadilan. Akan tetapi, dalam kasus pada Putusan Pengadilan Tata Usaha Negara Jakarta Nomor 216/G/2020/PTUN-JKT notaris mengajukan perubahan anggaran dasar perkumpulan AMPHURI ketika perkumpulan sedang dalam sengketa kepengurusan. Hal ini terjadi karena tidak adanya peraturan mengenai pihak yang berkewajiban, dan berperan untuk memverifikasi kebenaran data-data dalam proses perubahan anggaran dasar perkumpulan. Permasalahan yang dianalisis dalam penelitian ini adalah mengenai …

Peran Notaris Terhadap Penyusunan Perjanjian Kredit Dalam Pemberian Fasilitas Kredit Oleh Bank (Studi Putusan Pengadilan Batam Nomor 36/Pdt.G/2021/Pn Btm), Prima Novrama Evrina

Indonesian Notary

Dalam membuat sebuah akta perjanjian kredit, seorang notaris diharuskan bersikap netral dengan tidak memihak diantara pihak bank maupun pihak nasabah. Hal ini dikarenakan notaris merupakan seorang pejabat umum yang aktanya memiliki kekuatan pembuktian hukum yang sempurna sepanjang tidak dapat dibuktikan lain oleh pihak yang menyangkal, sehingga apabila terjadi kekeliruan atau berisikan keterangan yang tidak benar dapat memengaruhi fungsi dari jabatan notaris dalam masyarakat yang membutuhkan perlindungan hukum supaya terhindar dari ketidakpastian hukum. Dalam kasus yang diteliti, perjanjian kredit yang jaminannya tidak diikatkan dengan hak tanggungan karena objek jaminan dalam proses blokir oleh Badan Pertanahan Nasional (BPN). Permasalahan yang diangkat dalam …

Status Harta Bersama Yang Dibebani Hak Tanggungan Dalam Perceraian (Studi Putusan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 2302 K/Pdt/2018), Novita Listyaningrum

Indonesian Notary

Berakhirnya suatu harta bersama ditandai dengan selesai dibaginya harta bersama tersebut kepada mantan suami dan mantan isteri pasca putusnya perkawinan. Termasuk dalam pembagian tersebut adalah seluruh kekayaan, keuntungan, kerugian dan beban yang didapatkan selama dalam ikatan perkawinan. Penelitian ini ingin membahas mengenai bagaimanakah status harta bersama yang dibebani hak tanggungan dalam perceraian berdasarkan putusan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 2302 K/Pdt/2018 dan bagaimanakah pertimbangan hukum dalam putusan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 2302 K/Pdt/2018 ditinjau dari Undnag-Undang Nomor 1 Tahun 1974 tentang Perkawinan. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian yuridis normatif yang bersifat eksplanatoris dan menggunakan data sekunder yang diperoleh melalui studi dokumen. Penelitian ini menemukan …