You are currently browsing archives for April 2016.
Legal Education and the Justice Gap
April 29th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
I read recently about an organization that provides efficient, effective legal services to low- and middle-income clients. The organization, Chicago’s Coordinated Advice and Referral Program for Legal Services (“CARPLS“), has been serving clients for almost a quarter century. They currently help about 28,000 clients a year at an average cost of just $33 per consultation. How do they do it? And what can legal educators learn from CARPLS’s success? Read on.
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Engines of Anxiety
April 29th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Two sociologists, Wendy Nelson Espeland and Michael Sauder, have published a book that examines the impact of US News rankings on legal education. The book, titled Engines of Anxiety, is available as an e-book through Project Muse. If your university subscribes to Project Muse (as mine does), you can download the book and read it for free on your laptop or tablet. If you don’t have access to a university library, some public libraries also subscribe to books through Project Muse. It’s a great way to read academic books and journals. H/t to TaxProf for noting publication of this book.
Harvard Goes Hollywood
April 22nd, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
Hollywood Public Relations is promoting a new program at Harvard Business School (HBS) called the Credential of Readiness (CORe). One of Hollywood PR’s account executives sent me an email, asking if I would like to blog about the program. Why not? I’ll discuss here the program’s suitability for law students. In a second post, I’ll explore what law schools themselves might learn from CORe.
And, of course, I’ll reflect on the curious marriage of the words “Hollywood” and “Harvard.”
Hippocrates
April 17th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
In a forthcoming article, I discuss the ethical duty that professionals have to educate new members of their profession. The ancient Hippocratic oath recognized this duty, commanding all physicians “to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning . . . to pupils who have signed the covenant.” Contemporary versions of the oath enforce a similar obligation, while moral and economic principles support the existence of this duty.
Surprisingly, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct do not recognize this duty among lawyers. This is a worrisome flaw. Without an established duty to educate new lawyers, our profession cannot effectively serve clients. Nor can we justify our status as professionals. Professions are communities rather than mere occupations–and an essential feature of those communities is their commitment to ongoing education.
A Look Into Our Archives
April 12th, 2016 / By I Am The Law
This episode is brought to you by BarBri Law Preview. They’re giving away a $10,000 scholarship for a 1L this fall. If you want to apply, go to LawGiveAway.com.
In this episode, Kyle McEntee (LST’s executive director) and Derek Tokaz (one of IATL‘s hosts) discuss three episodes from the archives. They reflect on what they found more interesting and important, emphasizing the value in researching legal careers early and often.
The three episodes are:
Scholarship Advice
April 5th, 2016 / By Deborah J. Merritt
My talented colleague Chris Walker is blogging this month at PrawfsBlawg with a series of posts about how junior scholars can maximize the impact of their scholarship. As Chris explains in his initial post, he hopes to crowdsource answers to questions that junior scholars frequently ask.
I hope Chris’s discussion will attract both junior scholars and more senior ones. A lot has changed in the world of legal scholarship over the last thirty-five years:
- Junior professors begin their tenure-track work with more substantial scholarly experience.
- Technology and reduced teaching loads allow tenure-track faculty to produce more scholarship–which, in turn, raises expectations for that production.
- Law reviews, conferences, and online forums have multiplied, making scholarship more interactive.
- Interdisciplinary work has increased and become more sophisticated.
- Concerns about insularity have revived interest (at least among some faculty) in scholarship that directly addresses student or practitioner needs.
Given these changes, how do we choose to use the time given us for scholarship? The opportunity to engage in unfettered scholarship is a great privilege–one that we should execute in the public interest. That doesn’t mean that the public should dictate our scholarship; great discoveries sometimes come from meandering, seemingly “irrelevant” explorations. But we, the scholars, should regularly reflect on the ways we use our privilege.
Appellate Lawyer: Telling A Court They Got It Wrong [Small Firm]
April 3rd, 2016 / By I Am The Law
There’s an old saying: When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on you side, pound the table. But if you’re an appellate lawyer? All you have is the law because the record (facts) is set at the trial level.
Virginia Whitner Hoptman is a 1981 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law. Immediately following law school, she had back-to-back appellate clerkships. The first was with the Third Circuit and the second was with the U.S. Supreme Court. She changed course several times throughout her career, but has settled back where she started with a highly-specialized appellate practice.
In this episode, Virginia explains the appeals process for winners and losers at the trial level. She also talks to us about elitism in the world of appeals, how difficult it is to become a full-time appellate lawyer, and what makes appellate lawyers fundamentally different than trial lawyers.
This episode is hosted by Kyle McEntee, LST’s executive director. It is sponsored by ShouldIBeALawyer.com and Top-Law-Schools.com.
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