Over at The Chronicle, there’s a report on a new study, published in the journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, that purports to show that lawyers consistently over-estimate their chances of succeeding in litigation. [The original paper can be viewed and dowloaded here]. From the abstract: Lawyers’ litigation forecasts play an integral role in the […]
Archive | Legal Profession
Legal Clinics Under Siege
The New York Times reports that law school legal clinics continue to spark controversy and political backlash, particularly (though not exclusively) at state-supported schools. The story keys on efforts by some Maryland legislators to defund the clinic at the University of Maryland law school unless the clinic turns over information about its clients and its […]
Benjamin Wittes Comments on His AQ7 Letter at The New Republic
The excitement over the AQ7 ad put out by Liz Cheney’s organization has died down, but Ben Wittes has this very interesting piece up in The New Republic extending discussion of the letter that he drafted, signed by a group of conservative and centrist folks criticizing it. I was one of the signers, and wound up […]
The Break-Even Starting Lawyer Salary?
Above the Law has a very interesting post summarizing a talk given by the Dean of Northwestern Law School, David Van Zandt, at a PLI conference on law firm management – Dean Van Zandt talks about the model of law school education and tries to approximate the median starting salary for a lawyer to make […]
A Question Re Legal Ethics
The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz has an op-ed today reminding readers of the inglorious role that Martha Coakley played in one of – certainly in my view – the greatest miscarriages of justice of the past twenty years in the United States, the persecution in Massachusetts of the Amirault family on prosecutor-contrived charges of […]
Do We Need Government Intervention to Reduce the Number of Lawyers?
Attorney Mark Greenbaum has a widely quoted column in the LA Times arguing that there is a glut of lawyers in the marketplace, and that the American Bar Association should combat this trend by reducing the number of accredited law schools: Remember the old joke about 20,000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea being […]
My Response to David Brooks, Taken from an Old Article on Lawyers, Elites, and the New Class
(Update: Thank you Instapundit) David Brooks has a piece up today in the Times attracting much comment. I am no populist, except perhaps by David Frum’s unexacting standards, but let’s just say I think that Brooks somewhere along the way lost the marvelous tuning that made him the true heir of Veblen. I think it […]
More ABA Mischief?
Taxprof notes: The Standards Review Committee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar has proposed revising accreditation standard chapter 3 (Program of Legal Education) to incorporate “Student Learning Outcomes.” The committee will discuss the proposed standards as part of the AALS Annual Meeting Program on Friday January 8, 2010, from 4:00 p.m. – […]
Do Blogs Influence Judicial Decisions?
J. Robert Brown considers the potential effect of legal blogging on judicial decisions. Any such influence would be difficult to quantify. Even when a judicial decision cites a blog, it is hard to know whether the blog in question actually influenced the case’s outcome. Nonetheless, there are occasional instances in which it is quite probable […]
The Thin Line Between Activism and Obstruction
Fifth installment of a five-part series on Silverglate’s book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. This week, I’ve had the pleasure of guest-blogging on the Conspiracy and expanding upon discussions from my book, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. I’ve examined the Supreme Court’s skepticism toward honest […]
Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee Forbids Facebook “Friendships” Between Judges and Lawyers
The Florida Judicial Ethics Committee has issued an opinion forbidding judges to be Facebook “friends” with lawyers who may appear before them: Judges and lawyers in Florida can no longer be Facebook friends. In a recent opinion, the state’s Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee decided it was time to set limits on judicial behavior online. When […]
Is Federalist Society Membership an Obstacle to Getting Law Firm Jobs?
The ongoing discussion over the law firm partner who decided to reject all job applicants with Federalist Society membership raises the question of how common discrimination against Federalist Society members really is in the law firm world. The only real way to get a definitive answer to this question is to look at systematic data […]
Baucus Scandal
By David Bernstein on December 5, 2009 9:02 am in Government Transparency, Legal Profession, Politics
N.Y. Times: A spokesman for Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, said early Saturday that the senator nominated his girlfriend, a lawyer who worked for him at the time, for a United States attorney position last March. The girlfriend, Melodee Hanes, worked for Mr. Baucus as his state office director and as a field director […]
A New Soros Initiative on the Economics Profession?
By Kenneth Anderson on October 30, 2009 1:49 pm in Academia, Economy, Finance, Financial Crisis, Legal Profession, Legal Professor, Regulation
Michael Hersh describes a new $50 million George Soros initative to try and remake the economics profession so to reclaim it from “free market fundamentalists.” The fund will be run by Robert Johnson, formerly a managing director of Soros Fund Management; it hopes to raise $200 million in matching funds. (H/T Instapundit; also Mark N […]
Too Many Lawyers or Too Many Laws?
A few days ago, Justice Antonin Scalia ruffled the feathers of the legal profession by suggesting that we are “wasting” too many of our “best minds” on law: I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of […]