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This article outlines parents' struggle to secure adequate educational resources for their child(ren) with special educational needs within the Irish State system. The authors challenge the view that legislation facilitates practical advances that are meaningful to individual families. This small-scale exploratory study reports the findings from five in-depth interviews with experienced legal practitioners in the area of special educational needs in Ireland. These were selected due to their involvement in a number of high profile cases taken against the State. The findings underline the challenges faced by parents pursuing the legal route and the need for supportive structures to be put in place prior to the ligation process.

Social workers and attorneys both interact with persons from diverse backgrounds every day, yet although interpersonal skills are an essential focus of social work education, these skills are not addressed in legal education. Interdisciplinary courses in which social workers and lawyers learn interpersonal skills together and have an opportunity to practice them through service learning opportunities are a way to remedy a gap in legal education. The authors describe a project recently piloted at a large midwestern university in which law and graduate social work students participated in an interdisciplinary course with a service learning component requiring students to work together on cases. As one component of the clinic's assessment, all students were pre- and posttested via an interpersonal skills survey. The law students showed statistically significant improvement in interpersonal skills at the end of the course. The results indicate a need for increased support for interdisciplinary education, specifically partnerships between the professions of law and social work.

This paper examines the role of William Graham Brooke as advocate of women's higher education and access to university. His work as advocate is considered against the religious, political, social and economic backdrop of late nineteenth century Ireland. A barrister, as Clerk in the Lord Chancellor's office, he was centrally involved in the organisation of Anglican schooling as part of a broader Irish-Church re-structuring in the wake of its Disestablishment (1869). For Brooke, education, including the education of women, constituted a single project; it was also a public project. He was ideally positioned to execute his role as advocate: descending from a family with a long tradition of involvement in Church education, Brooke had a thorough knowledge of the problems confronting women in education and in the workplace. The paper traces how Brooke, in a largely male-dominated society, exploited the relationships between the various bodies with which he had close connections to enable women to fruitfully engage with these same bodies in order to facilitate their access to university.

This qualitative cross-cultural study sought to contribute to the understanding of listening competence, dialogic listening, and the use of human agency in promoting well-being at work. The participant groups ("N" = 103) consisted of "n" = 76 U.S.-American and "n" = 27 Finnish attorneys. Results suggest that in order to examine listening and well-being at work, a term professional listening competence had to be constructed. The results further suggest that a sense of a strong professional listening competence leads to positive experiences of self-efficacy and personal agency regarding the management of professional interaction by listening. These empowering experiences serve to alleviate work-related stress and have a positive effect on well-being at work.

In the article the state of forming of communicative competence of future lawyers in higher education of Ukraine and Germany is analyzed. There is made the comparative description of preparation of the students of law faculty with an accent on forming of communicative competence on the example of the University of modern knowledge (Ukraine) and Frankfort university is named after Goethe (Germany). It is drawn the conclusion, that the structure of professional preparation of future lawyers is folded educational and cognitive, research constituents, and also productive practice. A main place is taken to conception of communicative preparation of the future lawyers, the essence of it consists in integration of the special courses of the special and professional disciplines, in continuous perfection of skills of the verbal and writing broadcasting, receptions of analytical mental work, that need knowledge. It is also outlined the aim of productive practice of future lawyers in Ukraine that begins from the second course: the forming of professional abilities and skills of acceptance of independent decisions; the education of necessity systematic to proceed the knowledge, to promote a legal culture and professional legal consciousness; to teach to apply knowledge in practical activity. In Germany the practice for future lawyers begins from the first course and lasts two years in legal establishments (from civil cases, court from criminal cases or office of public prosecutor, administrative and managerial establishments, advocacy). The sign line of studies is an active collaboration with the faculties of law of the foreign states. All these factors assist the forming of communicative competence of lawyers.

Purpose: Research into professional services firms that have successfully implemented and adopted Web 2.0 tools are still rare, with no widely known accepted methodologies or frameworks. The purpose of this case study is to investigate a medium-sized law firm that embarked on a KM programme that makes explicit use of emergent enterprise-based Web 2.0 tools. Design/methodology/approach: The overlying research methodology applied is action research, in particular participatory action research (PAR). The study draws on interviews with practitioners, consultants and knowledge workers and takes into consideration multiple stakeholder views and value conflicts. The project is part of a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between RPC LLP and Westminster Business School. Findings: Implementation of Web 2.0 tools in professional services requires the blending of a number of approaches to address the intrinsic tension between the open, participative behaviour and iterative development methodologies encouraged by social tools, and more traditional management styles and methods of developing IT solutions. Research limitations/implications: This article presents a single case study based on a law firm that, at the start of the research, was operating from a single location in London and at the time of writing has expanded to multiple locations, including overseas. There may be a limitation to implementing lessons learned and methodologies to larger organisations and organisations outside the legal sector. Originality/value: While many organisations are still attempting to understand how they can practically implement Web 2.0 tools, this case study presents findings from a law firm that has had an internal Web 2.0-based knowledge solution in place for over two years. The research also makes use of a KM maturity model in order to assess the impact of the Web 2.0 implementation.

An attorney-client relationship is traditionally created when both parties formally enter into an express agreement regarding the terms of representation and the payment of fees. There are certain circumstances, however, where the attorney-client relationship can be implied from the parties' conduct. An implied attorney-client relationship may arise even though the attorney did not intend to create the relationship, if the client reasonably believes the lawyer has become the client's attorney. Whether the attorney-client relationship is created formally or informally, the attorney is subject to certain professional obligations and may be exposed to potential claims of legal malpractice or ethical misconduct. Many undergraduate law professors routinely receive requests for legal advice from their students. This situation is fairly common due to the extensive personal interaction among faculty and students within most undergraduate programs, which provides ample opportunity for students to ask questions. In addition, the undergraduate student population is largely unfamiliar with the law and the legal system, so it is natural for students to casually seek guidance from their professor. When responding to a request for assistance, however, a law professor should bear in mind that an attorney-client relationship may be created by providing legal advice to a student.

College and university lawyers must be prepared to address legal matters that range from the kinds one might expect to those that are unanticipated, even unbelievable. It's all in a day's work--and there's no such thing as a typical day in the life of a higher education attorney. The complex legal and regulatory issues facing colleges and universities have multiplied to the point where potential litigation permeates just about every aspect of the campus environment. An institutional commitment to preventive law helps create a positive campus culture by avoiding the need for formal legalistic procedures. To promote an environment where people resolve disputes amicably, higher education attorneys must be problem solvers, critical thinkers, consensus builders, and patient risk managers. Attorneys who can combine these skills with a healthy sense of humor will have one of the most interesting, engaging, rewarding professions ever. This article explores a sampling of real-life cases to help readers understand both the grab bag of events that require lawyers' involvement and the skills, expertise, and personal characteristics they need to have to deal with them.

The Mock Trial is an experiential exercise adapted from a law school process that encourages students to think critically about theories, topics, and the practice of management in an innovative classroom experience. Playing the role of attorneys and witnesses, learners ask questions and challenge assumptions by playing roles in a trial with testimony and cross-examination. Once a theory or topic has been chosen to be "put on trial," one team of petitioners (challengers) and their witnesses make arguments to a jury. Another team acts as the respondents (defenders) for the opposing side and presents their case in a mock courtroom setting. The jury renders a verdict using a fishbowl format for their deliberations. Then feedback and classroom debriefing, which immediately follow the trial, and later reflection papers help solidify the learning experience. All materials required to create, run, and assess a Mock Trial are provided in this article. (Contains 2 tables.)

In this chapter, the author uses the phrase "contemplative practices" to encompass an array of personal and pedagogical methods that combine training in awareness and first-person epistemological approaches to knowing and being in the world. These practices include mindfulness meditation (Magee 2011). The gradual inclusion of mindfulness training and other contemplative practices for law students and lawyers, and these various critiques of legal education, are distinct in important ways. Yet, on close examination, one may see significant overlapping concerns. Indeed, the movement to include mindfulness in legal education may be an essential foundational step in accomplishing the professionalism and professional identity development objectives at the heart of the major contemporary critiques of legal education (Magee 2011). Perhaps more important, however, the mindfulness movement may be essential to the reconstruction of law in the United States from its original position--one in support of subordination, exclusion, and the denial of human dignity to racial minorities, women, and others--to a new position, in support of inclusion and liberation for all. It may, in other words, portend the renewal of legal education and of law itself for the 21st century. This chapter describes the nascent development of a contemplative approach to law and legal education. It describes some of the notable innovations--inspiring new courses and cocurricular offerings--that have been increasingly observed among law schools and argues that because these reforms respond to a range of criticisms of the legal profession they merit further research and support among legal educators.

March 18, 2013, marked the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's unanimous 1963 decision in "Gideon v. Wainwright." "Gideon," a petty criminal, accused of suspicion of breaking and entry was the seminal Supreme Court case that ruled that defendants in criminal cases have the right to an attorney even if they cannot afford to hire one. The concepts in "Gideon" are now such an entrenched part of our criminal justice system, it is hard to believe that there was a time before "Gideon"--when many poor defendants were forced to represent themselves. The story of how that decision was reached is not just a story about lawyers and judges, but an exemplification of what justice really means. The question before the Supreme Court was whether the right to assistance of counsel meant that if a defendant could not afford counsel, counsel must be appointed to him. In order to rule in favor of "Gideon," the Supreme Court had to overturn its own ruling that dated back to 1942 that the Constitution does not extend the right of appointed attorney to defendants in state criminal cases, a point "Gideon" contested in a hand-written petition to the Supreme court based upon the Sixth Amendment that noted in part… "and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense." On March 18, 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to appointed counsel was a fundamental right and thus, state defendants who could not afford to hire their own attorney, commonly referred to as indigent defendants, regardless of status, class, or wealth, no one accused of a crime would have to face a trial without the aid of counsel. This ruling created a new sense of what is fair in American criminal proceedings and led to the creation of public defenders, or equivalent offices, across the country. "Gideon" teaches two important lessons about democracy and civics: (1) first, the law is full of ideals, and these ideals have to be balanced with political, financial and other realities, and (2) second, that individuals in a democracy have the power to make change.

As an immigration attorney for the past 14 years in both private practice and legal services, the author feels confident in saying there is not a "single" kind of immigrant or one kind of immigration story. There are multifarious individuals and families of diverse global origin bearing a cornucopia of ideas, perspectives, hopes and dreams. This past year, the author was given another vantage point to observe the manifold immigration experience when he was hired by Harvard University to provide legal representation to its DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and undocumented students in order to prepare for the anti-immigrant threats that Donald Trump made on the campaign trail. In this article, the author shares his experience.

Research studies have reported elevated rates of psychological distress (e.g., depression) in practicing lawyers yet little research has examined predictors of such problems in law students. Specific personality traits have been shown to be predictors of a range of psychological problems. We administered a battery of tests to a cohort of 1st-year law students (n = 150) and measured the Big Five personality traits and emotional intelligence (EI) to examine their relationships to psychological well-being as indicated by coping styles, satisfaction with life, performance-based self-esteem (PBSE), Global Severity Index (GSI) scores from the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI), depression, and alcohol use. We found that whereas EI was significantly related to three of the five well-being variables, the Big Five personality factor of neuroticism was found to be a stronger predictor of well-being. The findings suggest that EI does not account for additional variance in well-being over personality. (Contains 4 tables.)

Income inequality has been increasing in the United States, and "intraoccupational" processes are partly responsible (Kim and Sakamoto 2008; Mouw and Kalleberg 2010). To date, scholars have focused on suboccupational divisions, such as specialty areas, to understand why some members of an occupation earn more than others. In this article we theorize, operationalize, and assess the economic effect of another way in which members of the same profession can be distinguished: by the "extent" to which they specialize. Using two large secondary datasets on lawyers in the United States, we find that lawyers who specialize earn more. This effect arises partly through two mechanisms--individual productivity and firm size--and depends upon specialty area prestige: lawyers in low-prestige areas actually benefit more from specializing.

In response to the negative and inefficient treatment of rape victims by emergency room personnel, the first Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) programs began in the late 1970s. While SANEs, doctors, rape victim advocates, police officers and prosecutors work together to ensure the most comprehensive and sensitive care of rape victims, they all have very different roles and objectives. This research explores SANEs' perceptions of their relationships with other professionals who treat or interact with rape victims. Data from interviews with 39 Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners from four East Coast states indicate positive relationships are marked by open communication, respect shown towards SANEs as well as rape victims, and a sense of appreciation among SANEs. On the contrary, negative relationships result when SANEs believe police treat victims poorly, when advocates overstep boundaries and question SANEs about evidence collection or the exam, and when prosecutors fail to properly prepare them to testify during a trial. (Contains 7 notes and 2 tables.)

When a client faces a penalty of death, defense attorneys may call on social workers in many capacities: mitigation specialist, expert witness, consulting specialist, direct witness, or defense-initiated victim outreach worker. The American Bar Association set forth standards for capital defense attorneys, which led an interdisciplinary team to produce the "Supplementary Guidelines for the Mitigation Function of Defense Teams in Death Penalty Cases" to promote the exceptional competence and diligence required when the consequence is life or death. This article summarizes the "Supplementary Guidelines," with implications for social work practice--that is, professional responsibility, competence, interviewing skill, knowledge of behavioral and mental impairment, records review, life history compilation, data interpretation, witness support, law-related knowledge, and testimony. The social work, which is scrutinized in a court of law, requires cultural competence, diverse oral and written communication skills, diligence, and the highest ethical standards.

Over her 30-year career as a certified teacher, researcher, and university teacher educator, the author has planned, facilitated and refined educational experiences for children from pre-kindergarten through adolescence, as well as for adults who teach (or were preparing to teach) in New York, Connecticut, Texas, and Arizona. During the summer of 2008, she served in Italy as a member of Volunteers for Peace, an international non-profit global immersion program directed towards arts, education, and cultural exchange. She was assigned to Barra, an economically disadvantaged area southeast of Naples. Despite her advanced degree, she was considered an adult "counselor" during the summer. With her professional background, she assumed that she would be mentoring older students, but found that her assignment was to support a lead teacher in her work with 24 young children. After a few days, she resigned herself to the "learner's seat," a position to which she was not accustomed. From this vantage, she realized how advanced the thinking of the four and five years olds under her care appeared to be. The pre-schoolers seemed to believe that they were charged with re-educating her, a middle-aged career teacher, professor of education, and mother of two grown children. As the weeks progressed, she began to perceive ways that these children were using their innate thinking skills to achieve, create, communicate, negotiate, and formulate decisions. She wrote up eight realizations, which is discussed in this article, hoping that these observations, vignettes, and tips (or suggestions) might be of use to other educators. These are: (1) Kids think like economists; (2) Kids think like lawyers; (3) Kids think like strategists; (4) Kids think like kids; (5) Kids think like keepers of the culture; (6) Kids think like pragmatists; (7) Kids think like artists; and (8) Kids think like global citizens. (Contains 3 notes.)

The 1772 execution of the Mohegan sailor Moses Paul served as the occasion for Samson Occom's popular "Sermon," reprinted in numerous editions. Recent work by Ava Chamberlain seeks to recover Paul's version of events from contemporary court records. This article argues that Paul's "firsthand" account of the case and autobiographical narrative submitted in his appeal illustrate the importance of approaching confessional texts such as Paul's as fundamentally coauthored documents. I argue that both Occom's "Sermon" and Paul's "Petition," which was cowritten with his attorney William Samuel Johnson, construct mediated, communal definitions of "Indianness" and provide an unintentional space for individual narrative autonomy. (Contains 81 notes.)

This study is about female auxiliary workers in the Australian legal sector. The purpose is to explore the impact of subjectivities on women workers and how they negotiate their positionality to participate in meaningful work and learning. The study is grounded in theories of identity and socio-cultural perspectives of subjectivity, agentic action and reflexivity. The approach is a critical ethnography and procedures for data gathering were triangulated through interviews, observations and reflective diaries. Findings reveal that, in spite of impeding subjectivities and low workplace affordances, auxiliary women's learning is mostly shaped by their agency and reflexivity. The women participants identified themselves as pragmatic learners and demonstrated how they navigate subjectivities, and find "self" through agentic actions and reflexivity. Hence, it will only be through greater management awareness and more conducive educational pathways for auxiliary women workers that these workers will achieve their goals and realise their full potential.

Role conflict has been an issue in the intervention of child abuse cases since the beginning of the alliance drawn between the legal and mental health professions. In child abuse cases, clearly defined roles will prevent an attack on the process, thereby providing successful interventions to protect children. The child advocacy center concept is one of the best ways to meld the two professional functions into a cohesive approach to those interventions. (Contains 1 note.)

The case law on attorney-client privilege is extensive and can be somewhat complex. Over seven hundred articles in Westlaw, for example, have the phrase "attorney-client privilege" in the title; in the last three years alone, there have been over 3700 federal cases in which the phrase "attorney-client privilege" appears at least once. However, business law and legal environment textbooks typically have a short or even no discussion of issues related to attorney-client privilege. This article presents three practical and easy-to-remember principles of attorney-client privilege that every business student should know and that every professor of business law could use in teaching classes in business law and legal environment. They are as follows: (1) The attorney-client privilege protects communications involving the legal advice of attorneys, not communications involving their business advice; (2) A client can lose the privilege by sharing an attorney's legal advice with a third party; and (3) Not all attorneys enjoy the same presumption that their confidential communication was made for the purpose of providing legal advice. While legal scholars and federal judges can be innovative in their thinking about privilege issues, these basic principles are unlikely to change abruptly because they are, well, "black letter law." For this reason, they are precisely what business students should know about attorney-client privilege. (Contains 70 footnotes.)

The purpose of this article is to persuade legal studies teachers of the benefits of using works from other disciplines to illustrate the rationales for law, the greater context in which the legal order operates, and the relationship between law and society. The tangential benefits of using works from other disciplines are the enhancement of the joy of teaching, improvement of the attention and imagination of students, and the broadening of the minds of students who may lack a broad exposure to the humanities. Some maintain that instruction in the humanities is a critical tool in shaping democratic citizens. Materials from the humanities and social sciences or "Extra-Legal Sources" (ELS) engage students in different ways and are well suited to teaching students possessing a range of individual learning styles. The value of an interdisciplinary approach to teaching legal studies is that it provides another means to enhance student understanding. Part I provides an introduction to the use of ELS in the curriculum to teach legal studies. It provides a brief overview of the literature dealing with ELS. It discusses the nature of the interdisciplinary approach to legal studies teaching, prior literature, and how the current recommendations build upon the work of prior legal education scholars. Part II addresses how ELS can broaden critical thinking skills, and engage students on both an emotional and a cognitive level. Part III focuses on four sources that provide a rich, interdisciplinary context for discussing legal principles including works relating to the trial of Adolph Eichmann, a penetrating film on the corruption of law, "Hitler's Courts: Betrayal of the Rule of Law in Nazi Germany," a classic adventure story, "Lord of the Flies," and the book "The Help," by Kathryn Stockett. Part IV provides classroom examples of how specific assignments drawing from these sources can enrich a business school or law school curriculum. (Contains 105 footnotes.)

Standardized tests have been increasingly controversial over recent years in high-stakes admission decisions. Their role in operationalizing definitions of merit and qualification is especially contested, but in law schools this challenge has become particularly intense. Law schools have relied on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) and an INDEX (which includes grade point average [GPA]) since the 1940s. The LSAT measures analytic and logical reasoning and reading. Research has focused on the validity of the LSAT as a predictor of 1st-year GPA in law school, with almost no research on predicting lawyering effectiveness. This article examines the comparative potential between the LSAT versus noncognitive (e.g., personality, situational judgment, and biographical information) predictors of lawyering effectiveness. Theoretical links between 26 lawyering effectiveness factors and potential predictors are discussed and evaluated. Implications for broadening the criterion space, diversity in admissions, and the practice of law are discussed. (Contains 7 footnotes and 2 tables.)

This research shows that the motivation to posses a desired characteristic (or to avoid an undesired one) results in self-perceptions that guide people's use of base rate in the Lawyer-Engineer problem (Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). In four studies, participants induced to believe (or recall, Exp. 2) that a rational cognitive style is success-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style failure-conducive) subsequently viewed themselves as more rational and relied more on base rate in their probability estimates than those induced to believe that a rational cognitive style is failure-conducive (or an intuitive cognitive style success-conducive). These findings show that the desired self had an influence on reasoning in the self-unrelated lawyer-engineer task, since the use of base rates was mediated by changes in participants' perceptions of their own rationality. These findings therefore show that the desired self, through the working self-concept that it entails, constitutes another factor influencing people's use of distinct modes of reasoning. (Contains 4 tables.)

The presence of counsel for juveniles in the courtroom seems advantageous from a due process perspective, yet some studies suggest that juveniles receive harsher dispositions when represented by an attorney. This study tested whether a "counsel penalty" existed regardless of attorney type and, guided by prior sentencing literature, used a more comprehensive model to determine the influence of extralegal and contextual factors that may amplify the counsel penalty. Utilizing official data from a Northeastern state in a multilevel modeling strategy, this study found that regardless of the type of counsel retained, harsher sentences were received as compared with cases in which a juvenile was not represented by counsel even after controlling for offense type. Moreover, minority youth with public defenders and males with private counsel received harsher sentences while community characteristics did not appear to have a significant influence on sentencing decisions. (Contains 3 tables and 6 notes.)

The wrongful conviction of factually innocent people is a growing concern within the United States. Reforms generated by this concern are predicated in part on the views of justice system participants. The authors surveyed judges, police officials, prosecutors, and defense lawyers in Michigan regarding their views of why wrongful convictions occur. The findings reveal that all groups acknowledge error and inaccuracy among justice system participants. In general, police and prosecutors believe that error levels are lowest, judges estimate higher error levels, and defense attorneys rank errors higher than other respondents. A majority of police, prosecutors, and judges believe that wrongful convictions do not occur with sufficient frequency to warrant system reforms, whereas a majority of defense attorneys believe that procedural changes are warranted. The findings reveal distinct occupational perspectives in respondents' attitudes concerning wrongful conviction. (Contains 1 figure and 7 tables. )

This article is an overview of sustainability efforts in US law schools. It describes two sets of drivers for these efforts--inside and outside the legal profession. Drivers from within the legal profession include the American Bar Association as well as several state and local bar associations; law firms and other law organisations; and current and prospective law students. Drivers from outside the legal profession include clients, universities and colleges, nongovernmental organisations, and government. This article then describes what US law schools are now doing in the areas of curriculum, research, buildings and operations, community outreach and service, student life, and institutional mission, policy and planning. More generally, it suggests that law schools need to play a leading role in the national and global effort to achieve sustainability. (Contains 2 notes.)

This study examines interactions from trials in the Syariah court in Malaysia. It focuses on the types of questioning, the choice of language and the linguistic resources employed in this particular context. In the discourse of law, questioning has been a prominent concern particularly in cross-examination and can be considered one of the key communicative practices in legal encounters. Usually based on expectations and assumptions about what the responses are likely to be, an extended question and answer dialogue can allocate or remove blame and make a party appear trustworthy or unreliable. Questions which are supportive of witnesses can simply ask for confirmation, leading witnesses through straightforward narratives and information-seeking questions. On the other hand, questions during cross-examination create a negative evaluation of witnesses and defendants, destroying their credibility and casting doubts on defence statements. Data are collected from a Syariah court in the country and examined for the strategic lexical choices, specific linguistic resources, including code-switching, through which utterances are constructed as questions and how questions are sequenced in this particular context.

This study examined the influence of gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity on the career aspirations of over 22,000 8th and 10th grade youth. The top five occupations identified by youth as aspirations included artist, lawyer, musician, FBI agent, and actor/actress. Top occupations were also reported for each gender x socioeconomic status x race/ethnicity group. Aspirations were coded by social prestige level, minimum education requirements, and median salary. Results revealed significant main effects for socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity as well as significant interaction effects. Further, significant gender main effects and a significant gender x ethnicity interaction were found for occupational prestige and educational requirements. (Contains 6 tables.)

While many law students and recent grads have come to feel that legal education is an expensive waste of time now that the job market for lawyers has collapsed, some seasoned law practitioners have their own concerns about the worth of a legal education. Their concerns, however, relate to product quality rather than product marketability. Newly-minted lawyers don't seem to write as well as they used to. Other complaints are more nebulous. In this article, the author delves deeper into law school education to explain how "great swaths of core legal doctrine have been scythed from the required law curriculum, a process of misguided reform that began in the 1960s." This has left law students trying to make bricks without straw. The author exhorts "seasoned" law practitioners to become once again "fully engaged in the affairs of the legal academy" and "take a good hard look "for themselves" at the doctrinal side of the law school curriculum." (Contains 32 footnotes.)

Lawyers are among the most unhappy, least respected wealthy people in America. There are, no doubt, many reasons for the morale crisis in the legal profession. After all, not many people like lawyers. Further, many aspects of legal work are objectively stressful. Litigation is rife with conflict even in the most courteous jurisdictions, and trials are known to tax the endurance of even the most seasoned litigators. But there's another culprit in legal despair, another force working in the hearts of young lawyers-to-be, a force with outsized influence in their future success but with seemingly minimal awareness of their looming professional reality: law schools. In no other professional school is there a starker gap between the profession as practiced and the profession as taught. Not only does law school fail to prepare students for their professional life, it often actually sets them up for defeat and disappointment. In short, law school promises more than it can deliver financially, professionally--and perhaps most critically--emotionally. If lawyers are on a path to despair and disappointment, law schools put them on that path and give them a hardy shove down the way. The author concludes with some suggestions for reform. (Contains 18 footnotes.)

This paper deals with the initial steps of the judicial process for persons with intellectual disabilities who are suspected of a minor offense; a stage where plaintiffs, police officers, and crown attorneys make a series of decisions that will have a significant impact on the course of the judicial process. The objective of this study was twofold: (i) to document the criteria that influence dispositions by police officers and crown attorneys about persons with intellectual disabilities in the criminal justice system (CJS), (ii) to report suggested improvements to better support them throughout the judicial process. Fourteen semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants from the CJS and from service and community organisations working in the field of intellectual disabilities. The results of this qualitative study indicate that decisions made and dispositions taken rely on a series of implicit criteria that influence the course of the subsequent judicial procedures against persons with an intellectual disability. Suggestions for improvement pertain to developing the screening of intellectual disability procedures, the provision of information to key actors about intellectual disabilities, a preference for the use of summons to appear over other types of procedures, and drafting memorandums of understanding between various organisations and police services regarding persons with intellectual disabilities. In conclusion, an emphasis must be put on screening and diversion procedures for persons with intellectual disabilities when appropriate.

An essential concern in the application of any equating procedure is determining whether tests can be considered equated after the tests have been placed onto a common scale. This article clarifies one equating criterion, the first-order equity property of equating, and develops a new method for evaluating equating that is linked to this criterion. The new approach involves graphically examining the difference in test characteristic curves (TCCs), calculating the maximum absolute difference between the TCCs, and comparing the differences in TCCs to the difference that matters (DTM). The new approach is applied to evaluate the equating of the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE) for six different item response theory (IRT) scaling approaches in the common item nonequivalent groups design. The new approach is also contrasted with Tong and Kolen's (2005) index for assessing first-order equity. The empirical investigations indicated that the Stocking-Lord and fixed-parameter equating methods appear to perform the best for equating the MBE and that the use of concurrent calibration is not desirable. (Contains 3 tables and 4 figures.)

Given substantial evidence of sex discrimination in the legal profession and the role of attorneys and judges in perpetuating gender stereotypes, educators have an obligation to prepare female students for the challenges they will face, educate students of both sexes about the role of bias in litigation, and seek to mitigate the influence of stereotyping in professional life. The authors' concerns regarding the professional environment their students will face have led them to examine the role of gendered stereotyping in an environment that mimics the one in which female attorneys will operate. This study examines the role of gender stereotyping in assessment of student performances in courtroom simulations, with specific attention to the sex of the judge. Specifically, the authors hope to determine whether men and women employ distinct criteria in assessing students and whether their distinct, gendered experiences lead them to evaluate male and female students differently. (Contains 6 tables.)

Objective: The aim of this study was to describe how sexually abused children experience the legal process, a process that includes being questioned by the police during the preliminary investigation and by lawyers and the prosecutor in the courtroom, and meeting other professionals from various agencies. Method: Face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 children--9 girls and 1 boy between 9 and 15 years old--who had experienced child sexual abuse (CSA). The interviews were semi structured and carried out and analyzed by interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). The aim of IPA is to explore the participants' views of the world and to adopt as far as possible an "insider perspective." IPA draws on a tradition of phenomenology and symbolic interactionism in attempting to understand how people make sense of their experiences. Results: Five major themes emerged through the analysis: not being believed, making CSA visible, need for support, sanctions for offenders, and lack of respect for the child's integrity. Almost all the children had a feeling of not being believed. They described feelings ranging from anxiety to dread and even terror when they had to describe the CSA they had experienced. Even though the importance of support for such children is already well understood, the children stated that the support they were given was not sufficient. The children said that they wanted support from a single professional who was well informed about both the legal process and CSA. When the children were asked to reflect on sanctions against the abusers, they said that it was important that the perpetrator got treatment/therapy but they also said that imprisonment was desirable. Financial compensation was not as important to them; the damage had been done and money could not compensate for that damage. The children also said that both the lawyers and the media had treated them with disrespect. Conclusions: It is valuable for children who have been exposed to CSA to learn that they can take part in the legal process as equal partners with the other participants, and it is evident that the quality of psychological care and support needs to be improved. The children want to be participants in the legal process rather than passive objects of that process. (Contains 1 table.)

The authors use data from the 2000 Census Public Use Microdata Sample to examine the likelihood of a birth event, defined as the household presence of a child younger than 2 years, for male and female professionals. Physicians have the highest rate of birth events, followed in order by attorneys and academics. Within each profession men have more birth events than women. For men, occupational variation in birth events can be explained by marital status, income, and spousal employment. These factors only partially account for occupational differences in birth events for women. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

The moderating effects of biological gender on the relationships between mentoring and career attainment were explored among legal professionals. Research results indicated that male and female lawyers were equally likely to have senior male mentors. However, senior male mentors were associated with higher career attainment only for female lawyers. Compared to male lawyers with senior male mentors, female lawyers with senior male mentors had higher compensation, higher career progress satisfaction, and were more likely to be partners or senior executives. The authors highlight the importance of simultaneously considering mentor gender and position, when studying the role of mentoring and gender in career attainment, contributing to the literature on the career development of women in the legal profession and in male-dominated professions, in general. (Contains 3 tables and 1 figure.)

In teaching and researching English for Law, considerable effort has been put into the fine-grained description of legal genres and accounts of associated legal literacy practices. Much of this work has been carried out in the academic context, focusing especially on genres encountered by undergraduate law students. The range of genres which must be taught in professional legal writing and drafting courses is comparatively underresearched in the applied linguistics literature. This article explores one such underresearched genre, the barrister's opinion. The article reports the findings of a genre analysis (Bhatia, 1993; Swales, 1990), drawing on the written opinions of five Hong Kong barristers, individual interviews with the barristers, and data from background information questionnaires.The study adopts a multi-perspective approach to genre analysis, drawing on the accounts of specialist informants to explain the genre as socially situated rhetorical action. Thus, the genre is analyzed in terms of its intertextual and interdiscursive writing context, generic move structure, and lexico-grammatical textualization. It is suggested that the findings may usefully be applied to the teaching of legal writing and drafting in a variety of contexts. (Contains 2 figures, 3 tables and 3 notes.)

Dramatic changes in juvenile justice have occurred in recent decades. One result has been the emergence of new policies and practices, many of which remain largely unexamined. One avenue for gaining insight into whether such policies and practices are needed or effective, as well as into how the juvenile justice system might be improved, is to tap into the perceptions of people who work within this system. Drawing on a national survey of juvenile court practitioners, the authors investigate key questions about the effectiveness of juvenile justice and discuss the implications of the study's findings for research, policy, and practice. (Contains 7 notes, 4 tables, and 1 figure.)

We tested the hypothesis, derived from the shifting standards model of stereotyping, that parenthood would polarize judgments of men's and women's job-related ability. One hundred thirty-five attorneys evaluated the resume of a recent law school graduate. The resume depicted the graduate as male or female and as either single or married with two young children. We found that a mother was held to a stricter standard for hiring than either a father or a woman without children. Results suggest earlier research conducted with undergraduates generalizes to professionals (Correll, Benard, & Paik, 2007; Fuegen, Biernat, Haines, & Deaux, 2004). (Contains 1 table.)