A new year, a new you? Stewart Levine has spent over three decades speaking to legal professionals after suffering from burnout as a lawyer himself. His new book—The Best Lawyer You Can Be: A Guide to Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Wellness—combines personal experiences and essays from industry leaders, meant to inspire far beyond January’s best intentions.
Dec 19, 2018 7:00 AM CST
All judges have cases that stick with them and linger in their memories. Sometimes it was because of the high profile of the case, and sometimes an obscure case had personal resonance because of the people or issues involved. In Tough Cases: Judges Tell the Stories of Some of the Hardest Decisions They've Ever Made, readers can learn the backstories to some of these decisions.
Dec 5, 2018 6:00 AM CST
“Show me the money!” After navigating the ups and downs of being an agent, Darren Heitner pursued another avenue that combined his love of negotiation and athletics: sports law. With…
Nov 20, 2018 4:05 PM CST
Ken Starr has been a D.C. Circuit Court judge, a law school dean and the U.S. solicitor general. But he is best known for his work in the Office of the Independent Counsel and the report that came to colloquially bear his name.
Nov 7, 2018 7:00 AM CST
Data informs, and in some cases controls, every aspect of modern life. Well, almost every aspect. “If you look at finance or medicine or sports, almost every other thing in the world is using data to make better decisions,” says Ed Walters. “Everything except law.”
Oct 24, 2018 6:00 AM CDT
Three in 10 American women who are 45 or older have had an abortion, Katie Watson, author of Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law & Politics of Ordinary Abortion, tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. For women 44 and younger, one in four are projected to have an abortion in their lifetime. Yet for all the fiery rhetoric about the legality of abortion, Watson–who teaches bioethics, medical humanities and constitutional law at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine–has found a reluctance by people to discuss their own personal experiences with abortion, or even the nuances of their views on its ethics.
Oct 10, 2018 6:10 AM CDT
Law school can be a lonely, stressful time, and it’s easy to feel like you're failing to fit the model of the perfect law student. But there’s no one right way to go to law school, says sociology professor Kathryne M. Young, author of How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School; you can craft your own experience.
Sep 19, 2018 6:00 AM CDT
Many people promote a daily practice of meditation, spiritual contemplation and mindfulness as a way to improve your personal life and well-being. Attorney Jeremy Richter argues that creating a similar daily ritual to focus on developing your professional skills can be just as helpful to your clients, career and law practice.
In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Richter, author of Building a Better Law Practice: Become a Better Lawyer in Five Minutes a Day. The book is structured to provide a daily reading on personal and professional development over a seven-week time period.
Aug 22, 2018 6:00 AM CDT
The authority to impeach and remove a U.S. president is one of the legislative branch's most powerful weapons. But in the country's history, despite many periods of open hostility between Congress and the executive branch, no president has been removed from office through the impeachment procedure. Why is that?
Jul 25, 2018 6:00 AM CDT
Cynthia E. Tobisman has won the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction for her second published novel, Proof.
Jul 24, 2018 8:00 AM CDT
Lisa Scottoline, C.E. Tobisman and Scott Turow have at least three things in common: They’re all novelists, attorneys and nominees for this year’s Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. In this special episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with all three authors about their nominated books, their creative processes, and the role they believe lawyers play in society.
Jun 20, 2018 7:15 AM CDT
From 1873 until his death in 1915, Anthony Comstock was the most powerful shaper of American censorship and obscenity laws. Although he was neither an attorney nor an elected official, Comstock used an appointed position as a special agent of the U.S. Post Office Department and legislation known as the Comstock Laws to order the arrests and prosecutions of hundreds of artists, publishers, doctors and anyone else he felt was promoting vice.
Jun 6, 2018 7:20 AM CDT
After losing both the 1960 presidential election and the 1962 California governor’s race, Richard Milhous Nixon vowed at a press conference: “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” and seemed to have written the epitaph to his political career. He left for New York and became a partner in a white shoe law firm. Yet six years later, he would win the White House, in no small part because of that firm.
May 23, 2018 8:00 AM CDT
Studies have shown that implicit bias is something that affects everyone to some degree. So what steps can legal professionals at all ranks take to make the justice system fairer and more equitable?
In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Judge Bernice Donald of the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and professor Sarah E. Redfield of the University of New Hampshire School of Law about Enhancing Justice: Reducing Bias, a book published by the ABA.
May 10, 2018 8:30 AM CDT
As violent crime in New York City peaked from 1988-1991, policy makers were desperate for ways to combat and prevent it. In 1994, a new theory was embraced by the…
Apr 25, 2018 8:30 AM CDT
In the 45 years since Roe v. Wade was decided, it has been a focal point for both anti-abortion and pro-abortion rights groups. But the opinion in the 1973 case has also been used by activists of liberal, libertarian and conservative ideologies to develop privacy arguments for issues ranging from access to experimental drugs to euthanasia to personal data security to sex worker rights.
Apr 11, 2018 8:30 AM CDT
When we think of civil rights movements, the first to spring to mind might be the battles against African-American segregation or for women's suffrage. But one of the longest, most successful–and least-known–of these movements in America has been made on behalf of corporations. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, professor Adam Winkler, author of We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights, shares what he learned from his investigation into how corporations have achieved constitutional protections ranging from the right to sue and be sued, to individual rights like religious liberty protections and free speech.
Mar 21, 2018 8:30 AM CDT
For nearly two decades, Dr. Steven Hayne and Dr. Michael West were the go-to experts who Mississippi law enforcement and prosecutors relied on when there was a potential homicide. Hayne performed the bulk of the autopsies in the state, while West was a dentist who touted his skill in bite-mark analysis and his pioneering use of UV light on human skin to detect trace markings he claimed he could match to objects. But after years of investigations and countless testimonies from the men, their claims of expertise began to fall apart—and wrongful convictions began coming to light.
Mar 7, 2018 8:05 AM CST
Feb 21, 2018 8:00 AM CST
As general counsel for the Teamsters Union Local 810, Mark Torres spends his days arguing for workers' rights. But another of his passions is writing; he published his debut crime novel A Stirring in the North Fork in 2015.
So when he was approached by Hard Ball Press to write a bilingual children's book explaining the importance of labor unions in ways that kids could connect with, Torres agreed. Good Guy Jake (or Buen Chico Jake) tells the story of a sanitation worker who breaks the rules by taking toys from the trash along his route, but for a good reason: He fixes the toys and donates them to a local shelter so that children can have presents at Christmas. When Jake's manager discovers that Jake has been violating regulations, it's up to Jake's union representative, his lawyer and an arbitration judge to determine whether Jake has to lose his job or whether there's a more fitting solution to the problem.
Feb 7, 2018 8:30 AM CST
