Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal最新文献

{"title":"Legal Discrimination? Alternatives to Traditional Linear Equity Partnerships and Flexible Employment for Female Attorneys at U.S. Law Firms","authors":"Jeffrey L. Gower","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1803264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1803264","url":null,"abstract":"As the legal profession gradually reaches equality in numbers among male and female practitioners, the percentage of female law firm partners remains at relatively low levels. Equity partnership in a law firm remains the last bastion of male dominance, shutting the door on sharing the wealth within the profession. As stated by Reichman and Sterling, compensation disparity is clearly the foundation of gender disparity. However, the increase in female attorneys during the post-feminist era has also brought about a critical mass of women who do not want to participate in the years of long hours and high billable hours that many firms require on the partnership track. In an attempt to keep institutional knowledge, many law firms have designed retention programs for young female lawyers that include part-time work that allows time for raising small children, and non-equity partnership tracks that do not require the arduous hours required for an equity partnership. But does this solve the problem of low levels of female partnerships? This article looks at historical basis and current trends of law firm partnerships, the use of two-tier partnership structures, and gives suggestions on how to increase levels of female partnerships.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121523026","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":"Looking Beyond Gender: Women’s Experiences at Law School","authors":"Eli Wald, Carrie Golden, Erin Snow, Nicole Van Hook, Heidi Haberman, Elena Vigil, Tamara Henry, Jillian Kysor, T. Berhanu, M. Weiland","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1757882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1757882","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the interplay between gender identity and racial, cultural, and ethnic identity as well as socioeconomic background, intellectual self esteem, and familial support systems to investigate the experience of women law students in legal education. Consisting of nine narratives by female law students of varying identities and backgrounds, the article’s main goal is to question the traditional focus on gender identity as a defining and explanatory factor of women’s subpar legal education and examine its interplay with other aspects of students’ identity and background conditions.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132222178","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":"Implementing Bologna Process: Taking into Account What Students Think and Improving Professor’s Performance in Class","authors":"F. Díez","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1831119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1831119","url":null,"abstract":"All the so-called “Bologna-process” is paying close attention to many important things regarding High School / University education, such as skills, competences, new research trends, TICs, accreditation and quality assurance, etc. However - to our understanding- is overlooking at least two crucial issues: what students think about University, and how professors achieve excellence in their classes. As to the first topic, although the students are to play a key role in the new European Higher Education Area, and are supposed to be placed at the very centre of the teaching-learning process, however, no schemes are developed yet to hear them, and - whenever necessary or convenient - take their opinions into account. The starting point is asking what makes college an academically and personally successful time for some students but not others. The methodology is conducting interviews and visiting various campuses. The results are, to say the least, pretty counter-intuitive, and to some point somehow astonishing. For example, we learn that students are more enthusiastic about learning in courses that have some relevance to their personal lives or interests outside the classroom, instead of just fulfilling a graduation requirement. Or that students learn more when they collaborate on challenging homework rather than performing their assigned tasks individually. As to the second topic, closely linked to the previous one, much has been said about quality in research, few - in anything - has been written about what makes a class, a team-work, a group discussion or a lecture given by a professor a unique experience. Basically, the point here is, simply, what makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? Drawing on the experiences and techniques of a number of college and university professors who are commonly known as “good professors”, the short answer it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. It doesn’t matter whether they’re historians or physicists, or whether they teach in Harvard or somewhere else, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out. But they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. Finally, we offer some practical recommendations on the issues discussed above, departing from the typical “college guides” full of seemingly good advice that is too vague to implement.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130982179","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":"Reforming Indigent Defense How Free Market Principles Can Help to Fix a Broken System","authors":"Stephen J. Schulhofer, D. Friedman","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1710780","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1710780","url":null,"abstract":"Criminal defense systems are in a state of perpetual crisis, routinely described as \"scandalous.\" Public defender offices around the country face crushing caseloads that necessarily compromise the quality of the legal representation they provide. The inadequacy of existing methods for serving the indigent is widely acknowledged, and President Obama has recently taken steps to give the problem a higher priority on the national agenda.Proposals for improvement commonly stress the need for more resources and, somewhat less often, the importance of giving indigent defense providers legal independence from the government that funds them. Yet virtually every suggestion for reform takes for granted the feature of the current American system that is most problematic and least defensible — the fact that the indigent defendant is never permitted to select the attorney who will represent him.The uniform refusal of American jurisdictions to allow freedom of choice in indigent defense creates the conditions for a double disaster. In violation of free-market principles that are honored almost everywhere else, the person who has the most at stake is allowed no say in choosing the professional who will provide him one of the most important services he will ever need. The situation is comparable to what would occur if senior citizens suffering from serious illness could receive treatment under Medicare only if they accepted a particular doctor designated by a government bureaucrat. In fact, the situation of the indigent defendant is far worse, because the government's refusal to honor the defendant's own preferences is compounded by an acute conflict of interest: the official who selects his defense attorney is tied, directly or indirectly, to the same authority that is seeking to convict the defendant.We see this situation as the source of grave problems. As a corrective, we propose a free market for defense services, one that would, so far as possible, function in the same way that the existing market functions for affluent defendants who are able to retain their own counsel. Though we do not doubt the importance of resource levels, we see budgetary vulnerability and implicit conflicts of interest as inherent in any system where the defendant's attorney is chosen for him by the state. We seek to show that at any level of resources, freedom of choice for the indigent defendant can produce gains for both himself and for the public at large. We also discuss in detail how such a system could be implemented and why it can be expected to provide a practical and effective cure for many of the major ills of indigent defense organization.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"74 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127126849","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":"Prosecutorial Retention: Signaling by Trial","authors":"Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay, Bryan C. McCannon","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1691800","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1691800","url":null,"abstract":"We examine how retention motives affect prosecutor behavior under different evaluation criteria. In particular, we analyze how prosecutors of differing capabilities respond in choosing which cases to take to trial and which to plea bargain. We show how different criteria distort the mix of cases chosen for trial and that the direction of the distortion depends crucially on the evaluation tool used. Optimal evaluation metrics are derived that combine multiple signals of performance and are shown to achieve the first-best outcome.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"86 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123945693","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 Ethics of Contract Drafting","authors":"Gregory M. Duhl","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1552164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1552164","url":null,"abstract":"This Article provides the first comprehensive discussion of the ethical obligations and duties to non-clients of lawyers drafting contracts. It discusses fraudulent representations, errors, fraud, and \"conscious ambiguity\" in transcription, as well as \"iffy\" and invalid clauses, and argues that the standard for lawyer misconduct under the disciplinary rules should be consistent with the purposes of contract law, one of which is to promote trust between contracting parties. Additionally, the Article discusses lawyer liability for negligence to non-parties in contract drafting and contends that lawyers should be liable to non-parties only when they are third-party beneficiaries to the contract between the lawyer and client for the lawyer‘s services. The Article concludes by arguing for a functional set of ethical rules for lawyers drafting contracts that reflect the increasing emphasis on cooperation, rather than competition, in the contracting process.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130975426","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":"Washington’s Diploma Privilege","authors":"W. Sterling","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1837685","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1837685","url":null,"abstract":"The author presents a history of the diploma privilege in Washington State, allowed graduates of certain Washington state law schools to join the bar upon graduation and without taking the bar exam.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"94 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125245267","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":"Gender Inequality in the Chinese Legal Profession","authors":"Ethan Michelson","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.1328500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1328500","url":null,"abstract":"In China's urban context of labor retrenchment, women are faring poorly relative to their male counterparts. Is the same true in China's incipient, dynamic, and expanding legal profession? Findings from four sources of quantitative data suggest that gender inequality in China's private and highly market-driven legal profession is a microcosm of larger patterns of female disadvantage in China's evolving urban labor market. Although employment opportunities for women lawyers have greatly expanded quantitatively, their careers are qualitatively less successful than those of their male counterparts in terms of both income and partnership status. In the Chinese bar, women's significantly shorter career trajectories are perhaps the most important cause of their lower incomes and slimmer chances of becoming a law firm partner. Future research must identify the causes of this significant career longevity gap between men and women in the Chinese legal profession.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122456482","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":"Globalizing Public Interest Law","authors":"Scott L. Cummings, L. Trubek","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1338304","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1338304","url":null,"abstract":"Public interest law has become increasingly globalized in the post-Cold War era, incorporated in national legal systems across the developing world, and deployed in transnational activist campaigns advancing social justice causes. This essay - the introduction to a symposium on public interest law across borders - examines the structural factors shaping the global trajectory of public interest law and offers a preliminary appraisal of its emerging global role. In Part I, we trace the historical movement of public interest law from an insular American project toward a more globalized set of practices and concepts. We suggest two reasons for this shift. The first is the ascendance of the Rule-of-Law movement, sponsored by international financial institutions and donor agencies, which has promoted public interest law around the world as a crucial component of good governance built upon a foundation of rights enforcement and political accountability. Against this backdrop, local activists, particularly in post-authoritarian countries, have turned to public interest law as a way to achieve the promise of new democratic orders while accessing crucial funding support. Second, the institutional framework of global governance has drawn public interest law into the contest over the impact of open markets and the power of human rights at the supranational level. Transnational activist networks have mobilized public interest law in efforts to hold international finance and trade institutions accountable for their distributional impacts, challenge the deregulation of global markets through multi-level advocacy efforts, and leverage the power of the human rights system to strengthen domestic social justice movements and build transnational solidarity. Part II explores the implications of these trends, suggesting that they point toward two evolving conceptions of public interest law: as a global institution and a technique of global governance. With respect to public interest law's institutionalization in developing countries, we outline the factors shaping its distinctively hybrid form, which incorporates elements imported by global sponsors, while building upon indigenous traditions and adapting to opportunities afforded by national structures. As a tool of global governance, we suggest that public interest law is associated with a broad range of problem solving practices targeted to the transnational context. We conclude by offering a provisional map of the new terrain of this transnational advocacy, highlighting the global arenas in which it operates, the strategies it deploys, and the networks it constructs.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132682786","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":"Digital Diplomacy: The Impact of the Internet on International Relations","authors":"N. Westcott","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.1326476","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.1326476","url":null,"abstract":"International relations have always been profoundly affected by technology. The Internet - 20 years young - is having just such a profound impact. It constitutes, along with the IT systems it connects, a quantum leap in people's ability to communicate both one-to-one and one-to-many. Just as ocean-going sailing ships enabled the expansion of Europe in the 16th-18th centuries, the telegraph underpinned the empires of the 19th century, and the aeroplane, radio and TV have transformed international relations in the 20th century, the Internet creates a new set of opportunities and risks for the world. The main difference is that the changes will happen faster. It is still early to identify the Internet's impact on the relations between people across borders and between states. But it is necessary to try. Establishing a framework for analysing the changes - as business has done - will help governments and other international actors take strategic decisions based on reality, rather than on an outdated view of how things happen. Prediction is a poor basis for strategic planning, but a more sophisticated risk analysis of how the Internet is changing international relations will help improve strategic decisions, and indicate how to engage better with international actors to achieve the desired ends.","PeriodicalId":330356,"journal":{"name":"Law & Society: The Legal Profession eJournal","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123675521","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}