Each year, over 40,000 new students enter America's law schools. Each new crop experiences startlingly high rates of depression, anxiety, fatigue, and dissatisfaction. Kathryne M. Young was one of those disgruntled law students. After finishing law school (and a PhD), she set out to learn more about the law school experience and how to improve it for future students. Young conducted one of the most ambitious studies of law students ever undertaken, charting the experiences of over 1000 law students from over 100 different law schools, along with hundreds of alumni, dropouts, law professors, and more. How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School is smart, compelling, and highly readable. Combining her own observations and experiences with the results of her study and the latest sociological research on law schools, Young offers a very different take from previous books about law school survival. Instead of assuming her readers should all aspire to law-review-and-big-firm notions of success, Young teaches students how to approach law school on their own terms: how to tune out the drumbeat of oppressive expectations and conventional wisdom to create a new breed of law school experience altogether. Young provides readers with practical tools for finding focus, happiness, and a sense of purpose while facing the seemingly endless onslaught of problems law school presents daily. This book is an indispensable companion for today's law students, prospective law students, and anyone who cares about making law students' lives better. Bursting with warmth, realism, and a touch of firebrand wit, How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School equips law students with much-needed wisdom for thriving during those three crucial years.

Combining her expertise in legal theory and judicial practice in a continental European civil-law system, Jeanne Gaakeer explores the intertwinement of legal theory and practice to develop a humanities-inspired methodology for both the academic interdisciplinary study of law and literature and for legal practice. This volume addresses judgment and interpretation as a central concern within the field of law, literature and humanities. It is not only a study of law as praxis that combines academic legal theory with judicial practice, but proposes both as central to humanistic jurisprudence and as a training in the conduct of public life. Drawing extensively on philosophical and legal scholarship and through analysis of literary works from Gustave Flaubert, Robert Musil, Gerrit Achterberg, Ian McEwan, Michel Houellebecq and Juli Zeh, Jeanna Gaakeer proposes a perspective on law as part of the humanities that will inspire legal professionals, scholars and advanced students of law alike.

"Tournament of Lawyers" traces in detail the rise of one hundred of the nation's top firms in order to diagnose the health of the business of American law. Galanter and Palay demonstrate that much of the large firm's organizational success stems from its ability to blend the talents of experienced partners with those of energetic junior lawyers driven by a powerful incentive--the race to win "the promotion-to-partner tournament." This calmly reasoned study reveals, however, that the very causes of the spiraling growth of the large law firm may lead to its undoing.
"Galanter and Palay pose questions and offer some answers which are certain to change the way big firm practice is regarded. To describe their work as challenging is something of an understatement: they at times delight, stimulate, frustrate and even depress the reader, but they never disappoint. "Tournament of Lawyers" is essential to the understanding of the business of the big law firms."--Jean and Colin Fergus, "New York Law Journal"

Many of the innovations and ideas that legal teams need to embrace - such as those relating to project management and use of technology - have already evolved within the wider business environment. Despite this, many general counsel and other legal leaders report that they feel unprepared to tackle key business challenges and concepts. Business Thinking in Practice for In-house Counsel: Taking Your Seat at the Table takes a practical look at key concepts from influential business theory and illustrates how these are applicable to managing or working in an in-house legal department. Topics covered include purpose, culture, talent and innovation, all of which intersect to provide the structure and framework for legal teams to create a competitive edge. Each chapter features an interview and case study with a general counsel and/or legal team to demonstrate how business concepts can be used in-house most effectively. The author, Catherine McGregor, has engaged with the in-house legal market for many years as a journalist, consultant and commentator. During this time she has built close relationships with leading general counsel around the world and has observed first hand how the role of general counsel has changed and continues to change. Business Thinking in Practice for In-house Counsel is packed with lots of real-life examples and makes essential reading for any general counsel or senior in-house lawyer seeking to develop their business skills and maximise their team's success.

During the last thirty years, the judiciary has undergone an unprecedented expansion in its size and power. Judges now have more influence over our private and public lives than ever before. The effect of this change has been to transform the judiciary from an inward-looking elite into an increasingly heterogeneous professional body. 'The New Judiciary' examines the developments which have taken place in the appointment, training and scrutiny of judges as a result of the expanding judicial role. It highlights the increasing tension between the requirements of judicial independence and accountability which these changes are producing. The traditional insulation of the judiciary from all external influences is being challenged by the need for greater openness and public scrutiny of the judicial process. The passing of the Human Rights Act 1998, incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law represents another stage in this process by expanding the policy-making role of the senior judiciary still further. As a result, the continuing modernisation of the judiciary, which is the subject of this book, will be a increasingly important feature of the legal and political process in the years ahead.

What led a former United States Attorney General to become one of the world's most notorious defenders of the despised? Defending the Public's Enemy examines Clark's enigmatic life and career in a quest to answer this perplexing question. The culmination of ten years of research and interviews, Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. explores how Clark evolved from our government's chief lawyer to a strident advocate for some of America's most vilified enemies. Clark's early career was enmeshed with seminally important people and events of the 1960s: Martin Luther King, Jr., Watts Riots, Selma-to-Montgomery March, Black Panthers, Vietnam. As a government insider, he worked to secure the civil rights of black Americans, resisting persistent, racist calls for more law and order. However, upon entering the private sector, Clark seemingly changed, morphing into the government's adversary by aligning with a mystifying array of demonized clients-among them, alleged terrorists, reputed Nazi war criminals, and brutal dictators, including Saddam Hussein. Is Clark a man of character and integrity, committed to ensuring his government's adherence to the ideals of justice and fairness, or is he a professional antagonist, anti-American and reflexively contrarian to the core? The provocative life chronicled in Defending the Public's Enemy is emblematic of the contradictions at the heart of American political history, and society's ambivalent relationship with dissenters and outliers, as well as those who defend them.

In the field of socio-legal studies or law and society scholarship, it is rare to find empirically rich and conceptually sophisticated understandings of actual legal practice. This book, in contrast, connects the conceptual and the empirical, the abstract and the concrete, and in doing so shows the law to be an irreducibly social, material and temporal practice. Drawing on cutting-edge work in the social study of knowledge, it grapples with conceptual and methodological questions central to the field: how and where judgment empirically takes place; how and where facts are made; and how researchers might study these local and concrete ways of judging and knowing. Drawing on an ethnographic study of how narratives and documents, particularly case files, operate within legal practices, this book's unique and innovative approach consists of rearticulating the traditional boundaries separating judgment from knowledge, urging us to rethink the way truths are made within law.

In Towering Judges: A Comparative Study of Constitutional Judges, Rehan Abeyratne and Iddo Porat lead an exploration of a new topic in comparative constitutional law: towering judges. The volume examines the work of nineteen judges from fourteen jurisdictions, each of whom stood out individually among their fellow judges and had a unique impact on the trajectory of constitutional law. The chapters ask: what makes a towering judge; what are the background conditions that foster or deter the rise of towering judges; are towering judges, on balance, positive or detrimental for constitutional systems; how do towering judges differ from one jurisdiction to another; how do political and historical developments relate to this phenomenon; and how does all of this fit within global constitutionalism? The answers to these questions offer important insight into how these judges were able to shine to an uncommon degree in a profession where individualism is not always looked on favourably.

A rare and evocative memoir of a respected constitutional scholar, dedicated public servant, political reformer, and facilitator of peace in the land of his ancestors. John D. Feerick's life has all the elements of a modern Horatio Alger story: the poor boy who achieves success by dint of his hard work. But Feerick brought other elements to that classic American success story: his deep religious faith, his integrity, and his paramount concern for social justice. In his memoir, That Further Shore, Feerick shares his inspiring story, from his humble beginnings: born to immigrant parents in the South Bronx, going on to practice law, participating in framing the U.S. Constitution's Twenty-Fifth Amendment, serving as dean of Fordham Law, and serving as President of the New York City Bar Association and chair of state commissions on government integrity. Beginning with Feerick's ancestry and early life experiences, including a detailed genealogical description of Feerick's Irish ancestors in County Mayo and his laborious quest to identify them and their relationships with one another, the book then presents an evocative survey of the now-vanished world of a working-class Irish Catholic neighborhood in the South Bronx. Feerick's account of how he financed his education from elementary school through law school is a moving tribute to the immigrant work ethic that he inherited from his parents and shared with many young Americans of his generation. The book then traces Feerick's career as a lawyer and how he gave up a lucrative partnership in a prestigious New York City law firm at an early age to accept the office of Dean of the Fordham School of Law at a fraction of his previous income because he felt it was time to give back something to the world. John Feerick has consistently shown his commitment to the law as a vocation as well as a profession by his efforts to protect the rights of the poor, to enable minorities to achieve their rightful places in American society, and to combat political corruption. That Further Shore is an inspiring memoir of how one humble and decent man helped to make America a more just and equitable society.

The Literature of the Law brings together examples of the very best in judicial pronouncements over four centuries and two continents.
Assembled into themes, such as life and death deicisions, freedom of speech and the protection of minorities, they form a fascinating summary of the law's interaction with society. The Literature of the Law also paints an intriguing and sometimes humorous picture of the lawyer's life in and out of court, illustrating with examples some of the different styles of advocacy.
The text is stripped of legal references, which might get in the way of the general reader, and is finished with a number of line illustrations of legal London.

This monograph contends that the concept of the independence of the judiciary has not been seriously analyzed in England and examines it through the perceptions of the Lord Chancellor's Office. The Lord Chancellor's Office was established in 1880 as the executive arm of the Lord Chancellor, who is the presiding judge of England, a member of the Cabinet, Speaker of the House of Lords and also head of an executive department - his own office. Working from the records of the Lord Chancellor's Office, the author takes the reader through a number of related areas: the appointment of judges and the attempt to remove them the disciplining of judges their role in the Courts their executive responsibilities, particularly towards the commissions and committees they chair relations with Parliament and the Civil Service and the role of the English Judges in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. This work also examines the battles within and around the judiciary over the last 30 years, and places them in the broader context of the separation of powers, the legal system and the politics of the period.

This collection of essays on legal ethics addresses the subject comparatively, unlike any previous publication in either the UK or the US. Many of the papers originated from rare collaborative empirical research between academic and practising lawyers combining to produce a book that is unique in its concern with the issues that affect all lawyers in common law systems today. These lawyers are naturally apprehensive about the unprecedented investigation, criticism, and attack which they face. They fear for their livelihood and status in the community while sharing the public's sense of unease. Searching for immediate changes that might placate economic deregulators, the press and politicians, is one of the aims of this collection of original essays, many of which are written by people who are, or were, practitioners of law. This is reflected in the types of initiatives which are debated in this volume - to reform adversarial rules of procedure, to introduce mediational alternatives, and to curb systematic biases. The aims of this volume are therefore to reflect some of the key issues, to suggest possible arguments which might lead to solutions, and to provide readers, particularly those involved in practice, with strategies for devising more 'ethical' practices.

Among members of the legal profession and judiciarysional throughout the world, there is a genuine concern with establishing and maintaining high ethical standards. It is not difficult to understand why this should be so. But, in order to ensure that the standards established are the right ones, it is necessary first of all to examine important philosophical and policy issues. Such an examination is the purpose of this book.

Written by a distinguished group of law teachers and practitioners together with senior members of the judiciary, the book has as its underlying themes:

This Special Report on Legal Tech and Digital Transformation offers a practical framework on the following topics: * What impact do technology, legal tech and technology-based legal services have on the formulation of strategy in traditional law firms? * Does legal tech affect the competitive positioning of law firms? * Legal tech and client services delivery: will the distinctive value proposition of law firms change? * How does legal tech impact the traditional business models of law firms? * How do national and international law firms implement technology in their business model? What are best practices and what can we learn? The report concludes with a commentary on the perspectives law firms should consider in regard to legal tech companies and legal process outsourcing (LPO) providers (and how should they respond). Will we see mergers between law firms and such new entrants and legal tech companies? How will the 'Big 4' embed legal tech in their services and where will they try to compete?

Drawing on the authors' extensive experience at the Bar, Evidence provides an excellent introduction to the essential principles of the law of evidence in both civil and criminal litigation. The manual clearly explains the key rules of evidence, while its practical approach ensures that trainee barristers are prepared to conduct litigation in pupillage and beyond. This manual has been fully revised to cover all recent developments in both civil and criminal evidence, ensuring that the most up-to-date procedure rules and guidelines are included. Digital formats This edition is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats. The e-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with functionality tools, navigation features, and links that offer extra learning support: www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk/ebooks

The religion and state debate in Israel has overlooked the Palestinian-Arab religious communities and their members, focusing almost exclusively on Jewish religious institutions and norms and Jewish majority members. Because religion and state debates in many other countries are defined largely by minority religions' issues, the debate in Israel is anomalous. Michael Karayanni advances a legal matrix that explains this anomaly by referencing specific constitutional values. At the same time, he also takes a critical look at these values and presents the argument that what might be seen as liberal and multicultural is at its core just as illiberal and coercive. In making this argument, A Multicultural Entrapment suggests a set of multicultural qualifications by which one should judge whether a group based accommodation is of a multicultural nature.

The legal sector is being hit by profound economic and technological changes (digitalization, open data, blockchain, artificial intelligence ...) forcing law firms and legal departments to become ever more creative in order to demonstrate their added value. To help lawyers meet this challenge, this book draws on the perspectives of lawyers and creative specialists to analyze the concept and life cycle of legal innovations, techniques and services, whether related to legislation, legal engineering, legal services, or legal strategies, as well as the role of law as a source of creativity and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Lord Denning draws from a wide range of sources to support his arguments and incorporates coverage of many different cases, including that of the Russell baby, the Granada "mole" and the case of Harriet Harman, all of which are selected on the grounds that "the experience of the past points the way to the future." The book also discusses the proposals for law reform which have come from numerous Royal Commissions, Departmental Committees and Blue Books and which were all rejected by successive governments at the time of publication.

This book addresses the difficult decisions in the life of law students, graduates and young law professionals in deciding the area of legal practice to pursue as a career. The number of legal fields and subfields is over one hundred, making it virtually impossible for an upcoming lawyer to explore all of these career avenues. Many students finish law school with little understanding of what specific law careers involve, for example, or what sports or space lawyers routinely do. This book highlights the time-consuming nature of law education and training that causes a lack of experience in legal fields as being able to successfully determine the right legal profession for the student. Finding a law career that is a significant source of satisfaction is a function of serious thinking and active research, which the current university to legal practice does not facilitate. This book is a practical guide for any student or current lawyer who is deciding and evaluating their future legal profession.

No occupation in America supplies a greater proportion of leaders than law. They obviously lead law firms, but they also sit at the helm of a vast and diverse array of businesses across America, including 10 percent of S & P 500 firms. And of course, a strikingly large percentage of our political leaders are attorneys, including half the members of Congress. This raises two obvious questions: why do we look to lawyers to lead, and why do so many of them prove to be so untrustworthy and unprepared? In Lawyers as Leaders, eminent law professor Deborah Rhode not only answers these questions but crafts an essential manual for attorneys who need to develop better leadership skills. She contends that the legal profession attracts a large number of individuals with the ambition and analytic capabilities to be leaders, but often fails to develop other qualities that are essential to their effectiveness. The focus of legal education and the reward structure of legal practice undervalue the interpersonal skills and ethical commitments necessary for successful leadership. Although some lawyers are sufficiently gifted to need little reinforcement, Rhode shows that the vast majority of law school graduates need to develop the leadership characteristics that she profiles. They know it too. According to one survey, almost 90 percent of attorneys stated that their law schools did not teach them leadership skills.
Given the importance of the topic, it is surprising how little the profession has done to develop leadership skills. The first serious treatment of the subject, Lawyers as Leaders will be essential to law school instructors who teach leadership courses (a growing field) and any attorney who finds him or herself in a management position.

An urgent plea for much needed reforms to legal education The period from 2008 to 2018 was a lost decade for American law schools. Employment results were terrible. Applications and enrollment cratered. Revenue dropped precipitously and several law schools closed. Almost all law schools shrank in terms of students, faculty, and staff. A handful of schools even closed. Despite these dismal results, law school tuition outran inflation and student indebtedness exploded, creating a truly toxic brew of higher costs for worse results. The election of Donald Trump in 2016 and the subsequent role of hero-lawyers in the "resistance" has made law school relevant again and applications have increased. However, despite the strong early returns, we still have no idea whether law schools are out of the woods or not. If the Trump Bump is temporary or does not result in steady enrollment increases, more schools will close. But if it does last, we face another danger. We tend to hope that crises bring about a process of creative destruction, where a downturn causes some businesses to fail and other businesses to adapt. And some of the reforms needed at law schools are obvious: tuition fees need to come down, teaching practices need to change, there should be greater regulations on law schools that fail to deliver on employment and bar passage. Ironically, the opposite has happened for law schools: they suffered a harrowing, near-death experience and the survivors look like they're going to exhale gratefully and then go back to doing exactly what led them into the crisis in the first place. The urgency of this book is to convince law school stakeholders (faculty, students, applicants, graduates, and regulators) not to just return to business as usual if the Trump Bump proves to be permanent. We have come too far, through too much, to just shrug our shoulders and move on.

In "Law Lit," acclaimed novelist and law professor Thane Rosenbaum delves into our cultural obsession with the law, exploring how the legal system has historically captivated the imagination of artists and the attention of readers--from Oedipus Rex to today's courtroom thrillers.
This handsome volume, which TV anchor Jack Ford called "marvelously entertaining and enlightening," collects the iconic and the unexpected, each piece reminding us of the passion for justice, the struggle to do right, and the belief in the power of language that lie at the heart of the law. Were you inspired by Atticus Finch's closing remarks in "To Kill a Mockingbird"? Read them here, along with Portia's poetic maneuverings in "The Merchant of Venice," the famously heated cross-examination from "A Few Good Men," and Bob Dylan's controversial protest song "Hurricane."
With dozens of selections, including fiction, essays, and even film scripts, "Law Lit" is a dazzling collection that transcends place and time, from ancient Greece and foggy London to the narrow streets of Prague and the spectacle of an Alabama courthouse, offering an enlightening look at how lives can be laid bare before the bench.

This volume includes chapters from an exciting group of scholars at the cutting edge of their fields to present a multi-disciplinary look at how international law shapes behavior. Contributors present overviews of the progress established fields have made in analyzing questions of interest, as well as speculations on the questions or insights that emerging methods might raise. In some chapters, there is a focus on how a particular method might raise or help answer questions, while others focus on a particular international law topic by drawing from a variety of fields through a multi-method approach to highlight how these fields may come together in a single project. Still others use behavioral insights as a form of critique to highlight the blind spots and related mistakes in more traditional analyses of the law. Throughout this volume, authors present creative, insightful, challenges to traditional international law scholarship.