Legal Profession Commons^™

Courts Apply A Case-By-Case Analysis In Distinguishing A Meritorious Motion To Disqualify From A Delaying Litigation Tactic, Cathrena Collins

Bankruptcy Research Library

(Excerpt)

It is becoming increasingly rare for an attorney to remain at the same firm for an entire career. Lateral movements of lawyers coupled with large firms employing hundreds of attorneys creates ample opportunity for conflicts of interest to arise. The American Bar Association explains a conflict of interest is present when "there is a significant risk that a lawyer's ability to consider, recommend or carry out an appropriate course of action for the client will be materially limited as a result of the other lawyer's responsibilities or interest." Furthermore, Rule 1.10(b) dictates that a lawyer joining a new firm …

Focus On The Future: An Interview With Koye Idowu, Esq., Nicole P. Dyszlewski, Meghan L. Hopkins

Law Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

America's Lawyerless Courts: Legal Scholars Work To Recommend Large-Scale Changes In Lawyerless Civil Courts, Anna E. Carpenter, Colleen Shanahan, Jessica Steinberg, Alyx Mark

Other Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Other Bar Hurdle: An Examination Of The Character And Fitness Requirement For Bar Admission, David L. Hudson Jr., Andrea Gemignani

Law Faculty Scholarship

In The Other Bar Hurdle, published in the Mitchell Hamline Law Review, the authors examine the character and fitness requirement as a critical yet under-scrutinized component of attorney licensing. The Article surveys the historical foundations, purposes, and contemporary administration of character and fitness investigations, highlighting their dual aims of protecting the public and safeguarding the integrity of the courts. It then synthesizes extensive scholarly criticism, focusing on concerns about discriminatory origins, lack of transparency, inconsistent application, deterrent effects on prospective applicants, and the disproportionate impact on individuals with criminal records, financial hardship, or mental health histories. While acknowledging …

Introduction: Celebrating The Mound City Bar Association Centennial: Looking Back, Leading Forward, Karen L. Tokarz, David Thomas Konig, Hon. David C. Mason

Scholarship@WashULaw

In 2022, the Mound City Bar Association in St. Louis, one of the first Black bar associations in the country, celebrates its 100th anniversary. In this volume of the Washington University Journal of Law & Policy, distinguished authors look back at a century of contributions of Mound City Bar Association lawyers, judges, and allies, documenting their efforts to eliminate racial discrimination and break down barriers to equal justice. The volume is a testament to the work of countless individuals in the fight for civil rights since the beginning of the association in 1922. The authors also anticipate and examine the …

Judging Without A J.D., Sara Sternberg Greene, Kristen M. Renberg

Faculty Scholarship

One of the most basic assumptions of our legal system is that when two parties face off in court, the case will be adjudicated before a judge who is trained in the law. This Essay begins by showing that, empirically, the assumption that most judges have legal training does not hold true for many low-level state courts. Using data we compiled from all fifty states and the District of Columbia, we find that thirty-two states allow at least some low-level state court judges to adjudicate without a law degree, and seventeen states do not require judges who adjudicate eviction cases …

Libraries & Legal Research: Resources For Technological Competency, Virginia Neisler

Law Librarian Scholarship

At the time this article was written, Michigan was one of 39 states that included understanding relevant technologies as a part of the duty of attorney competence. In 2019, the Michigan Supreme Court formally adopted a new comment to MRPC 1.1. With respect to competence as covered under this rule, their comment made explicit that all Michigan attorneys should “engage in continuing study and education, including the knowledge and skills regarding existing and developing technology that are reasonably necessary to provide competent representation for the client in a particular matter” [emphasis added].

In February 2020, the State Bar of Michigan …

Robert Cover’S Love Of Stories: A Rumination On His Wanting To Discuss The Brothers Karamazov With Me Across Five Conversations During The Last Five Years Of His Life, With An Application To The Chauvin Murder Trial Of 2021, Richard H. Weisberg

Articles

The field of Law and Literature, perhaps more than any other area of legal studies, has been touched deeply by Robert Cover’s life and work. My interactions with Bob over the last half dozen years of his tragically short life provide an insight, recounted in a somewhat personal vein here, into his profound engagement with stories, with the most enduring part of that revitalized inter-discipline. I specify and illustrate five conversations I had with him during conferences, family interactions, or long New Haven walks beginning in 1981 and ending the day before his untimely death in the Summer of …

Book Review Of Shaping The Bar: The Future Of Attorney Licensing, Marsha Griggs, Andrea A. Curcio

All Faculty Scholarship

In Shaping the Bar: The Future of Attorney Licensing, Professor Joan Howarth issues a clarion call to the academy, the legal community, and the judiciary to reform the way we license lawyers in the United States. In this book Howarth identifies the current crisis in law licensing, the history of racism that created this crisis, and the tools available to address it. Shaping the Bar challenges our entrenched notions of professional identity, and it forces us to confront vulnerabilities in attorney self-regulation. It does so in a manner that will stir even those not immersed in the current debate about …

The Rules Of Professional Responsibility And Legal Finance: A Status Update, Anthony J. Sebok

Articles

Legal finance occurs when strangers fund litigation for profit. Traditionally looked upon with suspicion in the common law, and limited by the doctrines of champerty and maintenance, legal finance is now a thriving part of the American legal landscape. Legal finance has been promoted as a solution to the access-to-justice problems facing working and middle class Americans, as well as a new asset class for Wall Street. At the center of legal finance, however, are lawyers – not the lawyers who write the contracts for the financing – but the lawyers for the cases being financed.
/="/">
/="/">Over the …

Moving Toward A Competency Based Model For Fostering Law Students’ Relational Skills, Susan L. Brooks, Marjorie A. Silver, Sarah Fishel, Kellie Wiltsie

Scholarly Works

Legal education has long been criticized for failing to provide adequate professional training to prepare graduates for legal practice realities. Many sources have lamented the lack of sufficient attention to the range of competencies necessary for law graduates to be effective practitioners and develop a positive professional identity, including those that are intra-personal, such as self-awareness, critical self-reflection, and self-directedness; those that are interpersonal, such as deep and reflective listening, empathy, compassion, cross-cultural communication, and dialogue; and those that engage with the social/systemic dimension of lawyering, such as appreciating the role of multiple identities, implicit bias, privilege and power, and …

The Lawyers Justice Corps: A Licensing Pathway To Enhance Access To Justice, Eileen Kaufman

Scholarly Works

The idea for establishing a Lawyers Justice Corps emerged out of efforts to solve a problem: how to license lawyers at a time when COVID-19 had expanded the need for new lawyers while also making an in-person bar exam dangerous, if not impossible. We-the Collaboratory on Legal Education and Licensing for Practice'-proposed the Lawyers Justice Corps to provide a different and better way of certifying minimum competence for new attorneys while at the same time helping to create a new generation of lawyers equipped to address a wide range of social justice, racial justice, and criminal justice issues. When implemented, …

Access To A.I. Justice: Avoiding An Inequitable Two-Tiered System Of Legal Services, Drew Simshaw

Scholarly Works

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been heralded for its potential to help close the access to justice gap. It can increase efficiencies, democratize access to legal information, and help consumers solve their own legal problems or connect them with licensed professionals who can. But some fear that increased reliance on AI will lead to one or more two-tiered systems: the poor might be stuck with inferior AI-driven assistance; only expensive law firms might be able to effectively harness legal AI; or, AI's impact might not disrupt the status quo where only some can afford any type of legal assistance. The realization …

Impeaching Legal Ethics, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

In the investigations, hearings, and aftermath of President Trump’s first impeachment, lawyer-commentators invoked the rules of professional conduct to criticize the government lawyers involved. To a large extent, these commentators mischaracterized or misapplied the rules. Although these commentators often presented themselves to the public as neutral experts, they were engaged in political advocacy, using the rules, as private litigators often do, as a strategic weapon against an adversary in the court of public opinion. For example, commentators on the left wrongly conveyed that, under the rules, government lawyers had a responsibility to the public to voluntarily assist in the impeachment, …

Lawyering 'Twisties': Naming And Untangling Performance Anxiety, Heidi K. Brown

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

A Tribute To The Scholarship Of Professor Dale Oesterle, Jeffrey J. Haas

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Lawyers And The Lies They Tell, Bruce Green, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Noting that the First Amendment protects lies about the government made in the public square, this article explores whether lawyers’ free speech rights ought to be different from that of other speakers. The law holds lawyers to a more demanding standard of conduct than others when it comes to aspects of lawyers’ fiduciary relationships with courts and clients. But how much more demanding can the law be when it comes to lawyers’ speech — in this case, false political speech? Applying the current First Amendment framework, we question the bar’s assumption that lawyers’ speech outside of these contexts can be …

Tanggung Jawab Notaris Terhadap Pembuatan Akta Jaminan Fidusia Dalam Jumlah Yang Tidak Wajar Dengan Bantuan Sistem Milik Pt Sm, Emeralda Valerie

Indonesian Notary

Penelitian ini membahas mengenai tanggung jawab Notaris terhadap pembuatan akta jaminan fidusia dalam jumlah yang tidak wajar dengan bantuan sistem milik PT SM. Sistem membantu proses pembuatan akta jaminan fidusia dan pendaftaran dalam waktu singkat. Penggunaan sistem tidak mengindahkan syarat formal akta autentik. Penelitian ini mengangkat masalah mengenai autentisitas akta jaminan fidusia yang dibuat menggunakan bantuan sistem; tanggung jawab Notaris terhadap akta jaminan fidusia yang kehilangan autentisitasnya; dan peran Dewan Kehormatan Notaris (DKN) dalam pelanggaran atas batas kewajaran jumlah pembuatan akta. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian hukum normatif dengan studi dokumen dan wawancara. Analisis penelitian menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif. Hasil penelitian …

Peran Dan Tanggung Jawab Notaris Terhadap Akta Wasiat Yang Dibatalkan Oleh Hakim Yang Berisikan Erfstelling Atau Legaat Kepada Cucu (Studi Putusan Mahkamah Agung Nomor 295 Pk/Pdt/2020), Devka Octara Putera Akbar Girindrawardhana

Indonesian Notary

Penelitian ini terkait dengan akta wasiat umum yang dibatalkan oleh hakim dengan pertimbangan akta wasiat berbentuk wasiat fidei commis serta melanggar hak para ahli waris. Berdasarkan pada pengertian wasiat ialah surat yang berisikan kehendak yang dibuat oleh pewaris yang merupakan tindakan hukum yang ingin dilakukan apabila yang bersangkutan meninggal dunia dan dalam pembuatan akta wasiat umum ini dilakukan di hadapan seorang notaris yang mengakibatkan notaris juga dijadikan sebagai turut tergugat sebagai pihak yang membuatkan akta yang dianggap tidak sesuai dengan hukum di indoneisa. Permasalahan yang diangkat dalam penelitian ini adalah mengenai akibat batalnya akta wasiat umum yang dibatalkan oleh hakim …

Keabsahan Perjanjian Pengikatan Jual Beli Yang Objeknya Sama Dengan Perjanjian Jual Beli Dengan Hak Membeli Kembali (Studi Putusan Mahkamah Agung Republik Indonesia No. 509 K/Pdt/2020), Sem Sanjaya

Indonesian Notary

Penelitian ini membahas mengenai pengikatan jual beli di hadapan notaris, yang mana objek jual belinya sama dengan objek jual beli dalam perjanjian jual beli dengan hak membeli kembali. Jual beli dengan hak membeli kembali diakui oleh hukum perdata barat sebagaimana diatur dalam Kitab Undang-Undang Hukum Perdata, namun eksistensinya tidak dikenal dalam hukum tanah nasional yang mengadopsi hukum adat. Dalam kaitannya dengan hukum positif, hak membeli kembali tidak diperkenankan apabila dimanfaatkan sebagai upaya kreditur untuk menguasai benda jaminan milik debitur. Adapun permasalahan yang diangkat dalam tesis ini adalah bagaimana keabsahan perjanjian pengikatan jual beli sebagai suatu akta otentik apabila dalam persidangan …