Modern Law Library

Katherine James explains to the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles how she draws from her background in the theater to advise lawyers. James shares some of her war stories from her many years as a trial consultant and offers advice to listeners about how they can achieve the best outcome for their injured clients.

Legal ethics experts Lawrence J. Fox and Susan R. Martyn walk through the Six C’s” of legal ethics and share their advice for what lawyers most need to keep in mind during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Steve Wright discusses how he got into creative writing, what it's been like to teach students at the University of Wisconsin Law School remotely, and the possibility of turning The Coyotes of Carthage into a TV series.

Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman are sounding a warning about the direction of SCOTUS rulings on the separation of church and state.

What made 1950s America vulnerable to a man like Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin? In Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, Larry Tye takes an in-depth look at McCarthy's life. Tye tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles that his interest in McCarthy was piqued during his research for a previous book, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon. Ethel Kennedy's memories of McCarthy were clearly fond ones. She recollected a man who doted on children, gave her husband his first real job and "was just real fun." It was a far cry from the caricature of McCarthy that is more generally known. With access to military, medical and personal records that have never before been shared publicly, Tye was able to make a number of revelations. One of the surprises? McCarthy had told the truth about heroics during his military service in World War II, something that had been dismissed by many as another tall tale told by a fabulist. But Demagogue was not written solely to humanize a man who has become a cultural caricature. "I seek not to redeem the Wisconsin senator but rather to unmask fanatics and fabricators on all sides in a way that presents a truer, more fully dimensional portrait of a figure so central to the narrative of America," Tye writes.

Do you know how many billable hours you can devote to a new case? Or whether you need to add another attorney to your firm? Can you afford to take time off from your practice, and if so, how much? If you're one of the lawyers who is kept up at night with worries about your firm's finances, you are not alone. Financial consultant Brooke Lively says that law school does not prepare most people for the business side of the practice of law. Through her work with attorneys and firms, she's identified six key numbers that can tell the health of a law practice and identify what next steps a firm needs to take. They are compiled in her book From Panic to Profit: How 6 Key Numbers Can Make a 6 Figure Difference in Your Law Firm, and she walks the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles through all six.

We are used to hearing about wrongful convictions where a murderer walked free because an innocent person was misidentified. But when Montclair State University professor Jessica Henry was researching material for her course on wrongful convictions, she discovered that in one-third of all known exonerations, the conviction was wrongful because there had not even been a crime. This discovery paved the way for her new book, Smoke But No Fire: Convicting the Innocent of Crimes that Never Happened. In it, Henry recounts stories of disappearances deemed murders until the living "victim" was discovered; natural deaths deemed suspicious because of faulty forensic science; and fabricated accusations that sent innocent people to jail. More importantly, Henry identifies the lapses at every stage of the justice system that can allow for these injustices to occur: from dishonest police officers to careless forensic labs, over-zealous prosecutors, over-worked defense attorneys, and overly permissive and under-informed judges. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Henry speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about some of the strange and heart-rending stories she uncovered and how the legal community can work towards eliminating such injustices.

At a time when the country is discussing how the justice system and policing can be reformed, it's critical that we avoid adopting reforms that have damaging consequences. In Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, authors Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law outline the way that well-meaning movements ended up funneling people into environments where they faced even more scrutiny and punitive measures. In this episode, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses with Schenwar and Law examples such as the school-to-prison pipeline; court-ordered drug treatment programs with no proof of success; location-monitoring devices that are expensive and set probationers up to fail; and the invasiveness of family social services in an era of mandated reporting.

As a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, Aya Gruber has seen her Millennial students wrestle with a contradiction that she has long struggled with herself. "On one side of the scale is a Black Lives Matter-informed belief that policing, prosecution and incarceration are racist, unjust, and too widespread," writes Gruber in her new book, The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected Role of Women's Liberation in Mass Incarceration. "This side abhors the practice of putting human bodies in cages. On the other is a #MeToo-informed preoccupation with men's out-of-control sexuality and abuse of power. This side wants to get tough." In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Gruber shares examples of the unintended consequences of feminist criminal law reforms; discusses her personal experience as a public defender; and helps ABA Journal host Lee Rawles make peace with her interest in true crime podcasts. Gruber also describes how feminists can rethink gender justice advocacy without contributing to a discriminatory, carceral system. Special thanks to our sponsor, Headnote.

Alex S. Vitale explains the troubling origins of modern policing, why commonly suggested reforms like training and increased diversity have not been successful, and much more.