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Black Market Law Firms
Get PDFIn business and in competition, value exists in striking first. Accountants, the so- called hawks of the professional world, have made the first move. In September 217, the global accounting giant PwC opened a law firm in Washington, D.C. called ILC Legal. ILC Legal not only provides legal services on non-domestic matters, but also acts as a multidisciplinary provider (MDP) and offers other professional services, such as tax-planning, business consulting, and marketing, throughout its ninety-country network. In June 218, Deloitte quickly followed suit, the second of the Big Four accounting firms to enter the U.S. MDP market, partnering with a U.S. immigration law firm in San Francisco. With accountants now having the \u27first mover advantage, the legal profession must respond. Restricting any competitive response are the legal profession\u27s current ethical rules. Two weaknesses in the legal profession\u27s integrity system-the self-regulatory market monopoly over legal services and the ethical treatment of all lawyering acts under a unified profession of law-have restricted collaborative innovations between lawyers and non-lawyers. No more pronounced are larger impacts of these weaknesses to the overall competitiveness of the legal profession than when viewed through the exemplar of Model Rule of Professional Conduct Rule 5.4, which protects the professional independence of a lawyer through prohibiting non-lawyer ownership of law firms. This rule has not stopped accountants, however, from hiring lawyers en masse to deliver legal services to their business and tax clients; nor has the rule stopped enterprising lawyers from collaborating with non-lawyer professionals in an attempt to keep pace and to provide more holistic and comprehensive legal services to clients. This Article calls for recognition and regulation of MDPs because the legal profession must now overcome the accountants\u27first mover advantages. Despite this initial competitive setback, the legal profession is also now in a position to leverage its current self-regulatory monopoly over legal services to market higher quality, ABA and state ethics board-accredited MDP services to clients. This Article then proposes a regulatory framework for recognizing and regulating MDPs based on a classification scheme which categorizes MDPs based on the potential risk that the ownership and control structure could undermine a lawyer\u27s independent judgment. This novel classification scheme categorizes MDPs as either white, gray, or black market law firms depending on the percentage of non-lawyer majority ownership and control of the MDP. Based on those categories, this Article argues that we should revise Rule 5.4 to allow for unlimited associationalforms between lawyers and non-lawyer professionals but prohibit lawyers from providing legal services in black market MDPs, or MDPs which are majority owned and controlled by non-lawyers
Drink to every beast
No full textIn this romantically-charged environmental legal thriller, two teenagers die after swimming through chemicals illegally dumped into the Susquehanna River. Mike Jacobs, a young environmental prosecutor for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is assigned his first big case and must find, and stop the dumpers. Mike\u27s alluring new friend Sherry Stein, an ambitious young Deputy Attorney General, is investigating the man running against the Governor. Another of Mike\u27s friends, Patty Dixon, \u27the girl next door, \u27 is his mother\u27s nurse and Mike wonders whether she is being blackmailed. Their lives intersect. Danger strikes--who will die? Will Mike discover the treachery before the midnight dumper kills again? --Amazonhttps://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2020/1005/thumbnail.jp
Metamorphosis: A Minority Professor\u27s Life
Get PDFThis article is a dark semiautobiographical takeoff on a famous novel by Franz Kafka I use the predicament of Gregor the central character in The Metamorphosis as a thematic metaphor to explain a series of events in the life of an outwardly successful man of color teaching law It proceeds in a series of 37 short vignettes told in the course of a bedside conversation in which my young firebrand Rodrigo turns tables on his usual foil and straight man the Professor and asks him a few questions about his life and career Until now the two had focused on the young man\u27s ideas and prospects In an expansive mood with nothing better to do the Professor spills the beans What emerges is a tragicomic description of a middleaged academic who has come to realize with a shock that he is undergoing a jawdropping transformation brbrFor the analytically inclined the story\u27s prime lesson is that just as race is a social construction the selfconcept and even the soma of a person of color are functions of thousands of racially inflected interactions with fellow humans beginning at an early age The arrow of social construction in other words works both ways not one Literature shows this as well Second minorities who succeed by the standards of their profession face increasing pressure to revert to their rightful places on the evolutionary scale Kafka\u27s book shows how this can happen and the Professor\u27s tale does so as well in a modern settingbrbr The moral for minorities is that the struggle to preserve one\u27s personhood and selfregard must be valiant and unceasing For wellmeaning white allies the effort on our behalf needs to be so as wellb
A Rule 11 for Prosecutors
Get PDFThis Article suggests a novel approach to allow victims of frivolous prosecutions to hold prosecutors accountable. Unique among American lawyers, prosecutors enjoy absolute immunity from civil suits alleging professional misconduct. In cases of frivolous prosecutions, where charges are dismissed by the judge or the defendants are acquitted, the former defendants are prevented from seeking damages. This is so despite former defendants often suffering significant consequences-from legal fees to loss of employment. Victims of frivolous prosecutions should be afforded a mechanism to seek redress against prosecutors who bring or maintain meritless actions.
By enacting a rule of criminal procedure that mirrors Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 11, wrongfully accused defendants can obtain redress. At the same time, the reasoning behind prosecutorial immunity-that the fear of civil suits could have a chilling effect on prosecutors\u27 exercise of discretion-is undisturbed. Under this proposed rule, prosecutors could be held accountable for failing to conduct legal research or review available evidence to form a reasonable belief that the defendant\u27s conduct violates existing law. In cases that lack support in fact or law, the trial judge is empowered to sanction prosecutors\u27 frivolous conduct. Such sanctions are meant to deter future misconduct and compensate wrongfully accused defendants
Gun Owners Support the Right Not to Bear Arms
Get PDFDonna\u27s Law would allow individuals who fear suicide to prevent their own impulsive gun purchases. Research shows that many people would sign up, and versions of Donna\u27s Law have passed in Washington State and Virginia. This study is the first to assess public support for enacting Donna\u27s Law. We find broad support overall, including majority support among Republicans and gun owners. There is room for consensus around this voluntary measure to reduce gun suicide
Blood Oath
No full textAssistant DA Alexandra Cooper of the Manhattan Sex Crimes Unit is finally back at work following a leave of absence, and not a moment too soon. With more women feeling empowered to name their abusers, Alex is eager to return to the courtroom to do what she does best. But even she can\u27t anticipate the complexity of her first case when she meets Lucy, a young woman who testified years earlier at a landmark federal trial . . . and now reveals that she was sexually assaulted by a prominent official during that time. Yet Lucy\u27s isn\u27t the only secret Alex must uncover, with rumors swirling about one colleague\u27s abusive conduct behind closed doors and another\u27s violent, mysterious collapse. As the seemingly disparate cases of her client, adversary, and friend start to intertwine, Alex, along with NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, finds herself in uncharted territory within Manhattan\u27s Rockefeller University, a premier research institute, hospital, and cornerstone of higher learning. But not even the greatest minds in the city can help her when unearthed secrets begin to collide in dangerous ways . . . and unless she can uncover the truth, the life-saving facility just may become her grave.https://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2020/1010/thumbnail.jp
Overthrow: a novel
No full textOne autumn night, as a grad student named Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. It\u27s easier to know what\u27s in other people\u27s minds than most people realize, the friends claim. Do they believe in telepathy? Can they actually do it? Though Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, he soon finds himself falling in love with Leif - a poet of the internet age - and entangled with Leif\u27s group as they visit the Occupy movement\u27s encampment across the river, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%. When the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government, the news coverage, internet outrage, and legal repercussions damage the romances and alliances that hold the friends together, and complicate the faith the members of the group have - or, in some cases, don\u27t have - in the powers they\u27ve been nurturing. Elspeth and Raleigh, two of Leif\u27s oldest friends, will see if their relationship can weather the strains of criminal charges Chris and Julia, who drifted into the group more recently, will have their loyalties tested and Matthew, entranced by the man at the center of it all, will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he\u27s willing to give him. All six will be forced to reckon with the ambiguous nature of transparency and with the insidious natures of power and privilege. Overthrow is a story about the aftermath of the search for a new moral idealism, in a world where new controls on us - through technology, surveillance, the law- seem to be changing the nature and shape of the boundaries that we imagine around our selves --Publisher description; As grad student Matthew is walking home from the subway, a handsome skateboarder catches his eye. Leif, mesmerizing and enigmatic, invites Matthew to meet his friends, who are experimenting with tarot cards. They\u27re experimenting with reading other people\u27s minds, in telepathy. Matthew should be writing his dissertation on the poetry of kingship, but as he\u27s falling in love with Leif he joins the group. In the Occupy movement\u27s encampment, where they hope their ideas about radical empathy will help heal a divided world and destabilize the 1%, the group falls afoul of a security contractor freelancing for the government. Matthew will have to decide what he owes Leif and how much he\u27s willing to give him. -- adapted from jackethttps://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2020/1007/thumbnail.jp
A deadly divide
No full textFrom the critically acclaimed author Ausma Zehanat Khan, A Deadly Divide is the devastatingly powerful new thriller featuring beloved series detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty. In the aftermath of a mass shooting at a mosque in Quebec, the local police apprehend Amadou Duchon--a young Muslim man at the scene helping the wounded--but release Etienne Roy, the local priest who was found with a weapon in his hands. The shooting looks like a hate crime, but detectives Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty sense there is more to the story. Sent to liaise with a community in the grip of fear, they find themselves in fraught new territory, fueled by the panic and suspicion exploited by a right-wing radio host. As Rachel and Esa grapple to stop tensions shutting the case down entirely, all the time, someone is pointing Esa in another direction, a shadowy presence who anticipates his every move. A Deadly Divide is a piercingly observed, gripping thriller that reveals the fractures that try to tear us all apart: from the once-tight partnership between detectives Esa and Rachel, to the truth about a deeply divided nation -- Provided by publisherhttps://scholarship.law.ua.edu/harper_lee_prize_books_2020/1012/thumbnail.jp