Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Downward Trend Continues for Academic Reputation Scores: Addendum to 2013 Longitudinal Study","authors":"Robert L. Jones","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2409094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2409094","url":null,"abstract":"This brief essay summarizes the results of the most recent 2014 U.S. News & World Report (“U.S. News”) law school rankings in the context of the longitudinal study I published last year regarding the academic reputation scores that constitute 25% of the U.S. News methodology.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133402019","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Client Trust Account Fraud: Analyzing State, Federal, and International Rules and Regulations While Developing Effective Solutions for Prevention","authors":"Daniel Smith","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2394271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2394271","url":null,"abstract":"Client Trust Account Fraud: Analyzing State, Federal, and International Rules and Regulations While Developing Effective Solutions for Prevention examines client trust accounts and fiduciary duties associated with them and categorizes three types of client trust account fraud (“CTA fraud”). In addition, this Article compares four states’ client trust account rules and regulations and discusses how fraudsters attempt to circumvent the law in each jurisdiction. This Article then analyzes state, federal, and international agency regulation with respect to client trust accounts and proposes measures to implement to curtail CTA fraud. Finally, this Article describes steps taken by banks and other institutions to prevent CTA fraud and proposes both domestic and international solutions to reduce CTA fraud.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-02-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127905139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context: A Mirror and Window for Understanding Ethics of Law Practice","authors":"S. Fortney","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-1750","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-1750","url":null,"abstract":"This piece reviews the book, “Lawyers in Practice: Ethical Decision Making in Context.” The book’s editors, Leslie Levin and Lynn Mather, assembled an impressive group of scholars and practitioners who use empirical research to study ethical decision making by lawyers. After introductory material, individual chapters examine the struggles of lawyers who work in particular practice areas. Each chapter considers psychological angles, as well as environmental and organizational influences that impact lawyers’ conduct, the commonalities that lawyers experience in dealing with ethical dilemmas, and the courses that lawyers take in attempting to avoid ethical minefields. Part I of the review first discusses the basic structure of the book and its premises. Part II identifies the various groups that would be interested in reading the book. Part III examines themes that run throughout the book, including the importance of “communities of practice.” The review explains how the reading the book acts as both a window and mirror. First, as a window, the book provides an opportunity to peer into others’ practices and learn from their experiences. Second, the book serves as a mirror for lawyers to reflect on their own ethics, approaches, and perceptions of their work. Through this exercise, lawyers come to appreciate that ethical decision making is a skill that can be developed.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"167 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122290169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Role of Ethics Audits in Improving Management Systems and Practices: An Empirical Examination of Management-Based Regulation of Law Firms","authors":"S. Fortney","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2660358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2660358","url":null,"abstract":"For decades, legal malpractice experts have urged lawyers to implement risk management measures. To assist law firms in doing so, legal malpractice insurers have provided audit services and self-audit materials. The ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct also recognize the importance of policies and procedures as an aspect of a firm’s ethical infrastructure. Specifically, Model Rule 5.1 and state versions of Model Rule 5.1 require that firm principals make reasonable efforts to ensure that the firm has in effect measures to ensure that firm lawyers conform to the rules of professional conduct.In Australia, legislation requires that incorporated law firms appoint a director to be responsible for management of legal services and that the director ensure that “appropriate management systems” be implemented and maintained to enable the provision of legal services in accordance with obligations imposed by law. Under this regulatory regime, incorporated legal practices are required to complete a self-assessment process and to report on the firm’s compliance with ten objectives of sound law practice.Early studies in Australia revealed that management-based regulation of law firms dramatically reduced the number of complaints involving incorporated law firms that completed the self- assessment process. To obtain data on the reasons for the reduction in complaints, as well as other effects of the self-assessment process, I conducted an empirical study, surveying and interviewing practitioners in law firms that completed the self-assessment process. Study results revealed that the self-assessment process first raised lawyers’ “ethics awareness” and then contributed to their firms implementing and improving their management systems.This article discusses study findings and recommendations related to the effects of the self-assessment process. The article examines how features of management-based regulation may be integrated into lawyer regulation in the U.S. and how regulators, insurers, and bar leaders can create incentives encouraging lawyers and firms to examine and improve their management systems and practice controls.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"141 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2014-01-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123144491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Growth and Importance of Outsourced E-Discovery: Implications for Big Law and Legal Education","authors":"C. Birkel","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2314582","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2314582","url":null,"abstract":"The legal market is rife with inefficiencies at all levels of practice. Perhaps the most fundamental problems in the marketplace for legal services are informational asymmetries. Information important for lawsuits may not be available for analysis, sometimes by design of the parties involved, and that creates friction in the market. Clients demand greater efficiencies at lower costs, as legal services have become a commodity managers must buy. The creation of E-Discovery was itself an effort to further the efficient operation of the legal services market but that efficiency came at increased cost due to the dramatic increase in documents for review. Efforts to tackle the problem of cost have pushed the providers of E-Discovery to seek out objective metrics to measure value-added to gain advantage over rival firms. This paper first examines changes in the macroeconomic conditions of the legal services market that predated and helped foster the E-Discovery boom. This paper will examine the concurrent changes to the traditional Big Law firm that created the market for E-Discovery. Next this paper will explore the history and growth of the E-Discovery market. Further, this paper will argue the record of growth along many variables of business success indicates the appetite of the market and the likely continued importance of E-Discovery and other non-traditional avenues of employment within the legal field. This paper will examine the infancy and growth of one firm in this market space: NEXTRA. We will examine this growth through the lens of so-called Moneyball principles advocated by NEXTRA CEO, Bob Rowe. In Moneyball author Michael Lewis explores how Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics’ General Manager, used inefficiencies in the marketplace for baseball players to his advantage. The lessons Beane borrowed from other industries to gain advantage over opposing general managers in baseball can also be implemented in legal education and legal practice. Finally, this paper will suggest legal education refocus some of the 3L curriculum on entrepreneurial opportunities within the law. Evidence suggests traditional legal employment will not support the number of law school graduates currently entering the market. Meanwhile fiscal pressures mount on law schools due to declining overall enrollment. These twin pressures should lead law schools to change focus from “getting a job” to “making a job”.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127643305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reconsidering the Conventional Wisdom on the Legal Job Market","authors":"D. Barros","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2258806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2258806","url":null,"abstract":"Over the past year or so, a conventional wisdom has developed about the status of the legal job market. This conventional wisdom has at least three components: (1) Recent graduates are getting law jobs at distressingly low levels. (2) The legal job market is undergoing a profound structural change. (3) The lousy job market is a reflection of these long-term changes, and is not just a product of a recession and slow recovery.In this short paper, I push back against certain aspects of this conventional wisdom. I argue that it is highly likely that more recent graduates throughout the country are getting law jobs than the conventional wisdom assumes. My argument is based on data about what graduates from my school actually are doing now. I also briefly discuss the claim that the poor job market is due to structural changes in the legal job market. I explain why I am skeptical that the structural changes in the legal job market are significantly different than those that have occurred in the past, and why I am therefore skeptical that the current anemic state of the legal job market is the result of structural, rather than economic, factors. Finally, I briefly discuss Bureau of Labor Statistics data on the legal job market, and will explain why caution must be used in interpreting this data in discussion of legal employment.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134590269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Copy and Be Damned - The Anxieties of Academic Integrity","authors":"C. James","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2497917","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2497917","url":null,"abstract":"A major risk for law students’ well being is their apparent failure to accept the importance of academic integrity. As legal educators we know the importance of not cheating, whether by copying, plagiarism, collusion, or simply failure to adequately reference another's writing. In our discussions with students, and the increasing priority of academic integrity training programs, we place students at risk of heightened anxiety from a clash between our emphasis on rule compliance and their popular culture. Whether it comes from a cut-and-paste tendency of doing essays in high school, the glib and often regrettable commentary on social media or the always-on-line habits of contemporary youth, many law students seem unwilling, or unable to properly reference their essays, take-home exams or theses. In 2009, of 5,500 applications for admission to legal practice in Australia, more than 2,000 disclosed that as students they had either breached academic integrity so that they might not have \"good fame and character\" or be a \"fit and proper person\" to be a lawyer, or had a condition that may impact their capacity to be a lawyer. These national statistics mask extreme differences in disclosure rates between the states, indicating significantly different attitudes to what constitutes a relevant breach of academic integrity. The statistics also hide the human cost, the emotional and reputational damage of a young graduates having to publically disclose the circumstances of a breach, which may have occurred in their first year at university. This paper calls for a uniform definition of breach of academic integrity, and a uniform practice of disclosure of breaches prior to admission, so that law students are encouraged to develop a truly professional identity from the beginning of law school.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133170685","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reactions to the Persistent Gender Disparity in Student Note Publication","authors":"Jennifer Mika (née Mullins)","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.2200698","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2200698","url":null,"abstract":"Gender disparity remains an unrelenting issue in the legal profession. In “The Persistent Gender Disparity in Student Note Publication,�? published in the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism, I (along with Nancy Leong) presented original empirical research documenting a significant gender disparity in student note publication. Examination of the notes published during a ten-year time span in the general-interest law reviews at fifty-two schools reveals that women authored approximately 40% of student notes, while men published about 60%. Our article discussed the range of explanations for the disparity and explored its significance. We concluded by offering some preliminary ideas about what can be done to remedy the disparity. The reactions to our research proved to be nearly as interesting as the research itself. This article contextualizes these reactions as well as their implications for our original work. Part I summarizes the findings of my earlier work. Part II presents a collection of reactions to both the collection of the data undergirding these findings as well as the findings themselves. Part III places these reactions within a broader context of the legal community and its approach to gender disparities generally. I conclude that responses to gender disparity appear to be shifting, making the chances for productive change more likely.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-01-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127634833","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Unleashing Market Forces in Legal Education and the Legal Profession","authors":"D. J. Merritt, Daniel C. Merritt","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2190398","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2190398","url":null,"abstract":"Brian Tamanaha has written a thoughtful critique of legal education; we agree with his assessment and many of his prescriptions. Tamanaha, however, does not press hard enough on a fundamental flaw that plagues both legal education and law practice: Our profession operates as a tournament guild. Law schools and established practitioners maintain a lengthy, stressful, and expensive series of competitions to separate winners from losers. A small number of lawyers reap most of the guild profits; others toil for much less reward or leave the profession. Addressing this problem requires easing the market restraints that currently shield the legal profession. Ordinary fraud and consumer protection laws adequately protect clients; tighter constraints benefit established lawyers, while harming new lawyers and consumers. In this essay, we outline law’s status as a tournament guild, then suggest how market competition could address some of the problems identified by Tamanaha and other critics of legal education.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"6 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114268550","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When Your Client is an Organization – Some of the Problems Not Resolved by Rule 1.13","authors":"T. Rutledge","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.2175640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.2175640","url":null,"abstract":"More often than not, transactional attorneys have an organization, rather than a natural person, as their client. Kentucky Supreme Court Rule 1.13 sets forth particular ethical rules that apply when the client is an organization. However, the balance of the ethical obligations of an attorney, as set forth in the Kentucky Rules of Professional Conduct remains applicable. These Rules, as fat as they go can provide guidance.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"98 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114726556","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}