"In response to the current upsurge of interest in commercially exploiting expert systems in law, Part III re-presents Susskind's original research and development work in this area." "In the final part of the book, Susskind looks beyond legal practice to the justice system more generally, concentrating on the impact of IT on judges, the courts, and society."--BOOK JACKET.
Visual and multimedia digital technologies are transforming the practice of law: how lawyers construct and argue their cases, present evidence to juries, and communicate with each other. They are also changing how law is disseminated throughout and used by the general public. What are these technologies, how are they used and perceived in the courtroom and in wider culture, and how do they affect legal decision making? In this comprehensive survey and analysis of how new visual technologies are transforming both the practice and culture of American law, Neal Feigenson and Christina Spiesel explain how, when, and why legal practice moved from a largely words-only environment to one more dependent on and driven by images, and how rapidly developing technologies have further accelerated this change. They discuss older visual technologies, such as videotape evidence, and then current and future uses of visual and multimedia digital technologies, including trial presentation software and interactive multimedia. They also describe how law itself is going online, in the form of virtual courts, cyberjuries, and more, and explore the implications of law’s movement to computer screens. Throughout Law on Display, the authors illustrate their analysis with examples from a wide range of actual trials.
From law school to the law firm, lawyers are taught and encouraged to win, with little regard to the emotional consequences. After years of being obsessed with winning, racking up billable hours, and fishing for clients, many lawyers lose sight of why they initially joined the ranks of the legal profession. This landmark book explains how to reconnect with the spiritual side of law practice. It presents profiles of firms and lawyers who have transformed their practices from heartless and cold professional endeavors into kinder, gentler operations, with more emphasis on the clients'--and their own--emotional and spiritual needs.
The Smarter Legal Model is a practical toolbox of complementary methodologies which have been applied on a multi-million dollar scale and proven to: *Reduce legal costs. *Increase the legal work covered without increasing cost or headcount, by maximising individual potential. *Improve both compliance and client satisfaction at the same time. *Replace the traditional law firm-client tension with a mutually profitable partnership. The Smarter Legal Model applies world-class business and behavioral principles, such as Six Sigma, return on invested capital, zero-sum game theory and neuro-linguistic programming to the practice of law for the first time with tangible results. Recently reported benefits of the Model include a 27% reduction in legal fees, a 60% reduction in litigation volume and demonstrable improvements in client satisfaction. The Smarter Legal Model will be of use to in-house lawyers, private practitioners and even professionals from non-legal disciplines. The Smarter Legal Model has been adopted by major concerns and has been the subject of extensive analysis across the world. The Author has lectured on the Model at Harvard Law School, Oxford University, Georgetown Law School; in Washington, New York, London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Stockholm and Sydney.
In a remarkable book based on prodigious research, Morton J. Horwitz offers a sweeping overview of the emergence of a national (and modern) legal system from English and colonial antecedents. He treats the evolution of the common law as intellectual history and also demonstrates how the shifting views of private law became a dynamic element in the economic growth of the United States. Horwitz's subtle and sophisticated explanation of societal change begins with the common law, which was intended to provide justice for all. The great breakpoint came after 1790 when the law was slowly transformed to favor economic growth and development. The courts spurred economic competition instead of circumscribing it. This new instrumental law flourished as the legal profession and the mercantile elite forged a mutually beneficial alliance to gain wealth and power. The evolving law of the early republic interacted with political philosophy, Horwitz shows. The doctrine of laissez-faire, long considered the cloak for competition, is here seen as a shield for the newly rich. By the 1840s the overarching reach of the doctrine prevented further distribution of wealth and protected entrenched classes by disallowing the courts very much power to intervene in economic life. This searching interpretation, which connects law and the courts to the real world, will engage historians in a new debate. For to view the law as an engine of vast economic transformation is to challenge in a stunning way previous interpretations of the eras of revolution and reform.
This book focuses on what and how to teach students about being a lawyer as they take responsibility for clients in a clinical course. The book identifies learning and lawyering theories as well as practical approaches to planning and teaching; it highlights how the four clinical methodologies-seminar, rounds, supervision, and fieldwork-reinforce and complement each other. The book illustrates clinical education's transformative potential to create ethical, skilled, thoughtful practitioners imbued with professional values of justice and service. With contributions by both seasoned and newer clinical educators, the book addresses issues faced by all who teach in experiential lawyering courses.
"Although 2016 has been the breakthrough year for artificial intelligence (AI) in legal services in terms of market awareness and significant take-up, legal AI represents evolution rather than revolution. Since the first "robot lawyers" started receiving mainstream press coverage, many law firms, other legal service providers and law colleges are being asked what they are doing about AI. Ark Group's Robots in Law: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Legal Services is designed to provide a starting point in the form of an independent primer for anyone looking to get up to speed on AI in legal services [...] Along with the emergence of New Law and the burgeoning lawtech start-up economy, AI is part of a new dynamic in legal technology and it is here to stay. The question now is whether AI will find its place as a facilitator of legal services delivery, or whether it will initiate a shift in the value chain that will transform the legal business model."
Today’s justice system and the legal profession have rendered the “lawyer-warrior” notion outdated, shifting toward conflict resolution rather than protracted litigation. The new lawyer’s skills go beyond court battles to encompass negotiation, mediation, collaborative practice, and restorative justice. In The New Lawyer, Julie Macfarlane explores the evolving role of practitioners, articulating legal and ethical complexities in a variety of contexts. The result is a thought-provoking exploration of the increasing impact of alternative strategies on the lawyer-client relationship, as well as on the legal system itself.
Building on Best Practices is a follow-up to Best Practices for Legal Education, a project of the Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA), authored primarily by Roy Stuckey. With contributions from more than 50 legal educators, this new volume is not a second edition, but is intended to be used in conjunction with the original volume, as the core content of Best Practices remains just as useful as when it was originally published. In the wake of new ABA Accreditation Standards, the MacCrate Report, and other changes, legal education is called upon today to respond to a broader view of what lawyers must be trained to do. Building on Best Practices identifies ten such areas and provides guidance on what and how to teach them. The demand to teach a broader range of knowledge, skills, and values presents difficult trade-offs, however, that are also considered. "To demonstrate that law schools can still add value to careers and society, legal educators must grapple with structural changes that affect every aspect of teaching, learning and researching. Building on Best Practices provides diverse expertise and useful guidance on approaching these challenges and on improving and expanding the enterprise of legal education." - Jeffrey R. Baker, Journal of Legal Education
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
