Legal Practice – Page 35 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

21st Howard B. Eisenberg Do-Gooders’ Auction–An Interview with PILS Fellow Zachariah Fudge

Post author:Melissa Love Koenig
Post published:February 12, 2014
Post category:Legal Practice Legal Profession Marquette Law School Pro Bono Public

The 21st Annual Howard B. Eisenberg Do-Gooders’ Auction on behalf of the Law School’s Public Interest Law Society (PILS) will be held in the evening on Friday, February 21, 2014 at the Law School. Proceeds from the event go to support PILS fellowships to enable Marquette law students to do public interest work in the summer. Zachariah Fudge, a current law student, shares his experience here as a PILS Fellow. Besides his work as a PILS Fellow, Zachariah is active on the PILS student board.

You may attend the Auction by purchasing tickets here or you may purchase tickets at the door. This link also provides you with an opportunity to donate to the Auction.

Where did you work as a PILS Fellow?

This past summer I was a legal intern at the Alternate Public Defender’s Office in San Diego.

What kind of work did you do there?

The Alternate Public Defender took on felony cases where there was a conflict with the main Public Defender’s Office, so our cases were usually more complex, multi-defendant affairs. I was able to do quite a bit over the course of my brief tenure, including conducting client and witness interviews, researching, drafting motions, and representing clients during various types of hearings. I was able to second chair a ten-day trial that ended in the dismissal of all charges, so that was exciting.

How and Why: Deepening Your Legal Reasoning

Post author:Melissa Love Koenig
Post published:January 22, 2014
Post category:Legal Practice Legal Writing Public

One of my favorite law review articles to assign to first-year law students is Kristen K. Robbins-Tiscione’s Paradigm Lost: Recapturing Classical Rhetoric to Validate Legal Reasoning, 27 Vt. L. Rev. 483 (2002). The article walks a reader through the legal paradigm and discusses how to effectively use deductive reasoning and reasoning by analogy to create a valid and persuasive argument. One of the takeaways from this article is that an advocate should include the facts, holding, and reasoning of a case precedent being used to explain a legal rule. “Facts, holding, and reasoning” becomes somewhat of a mantra in my first-year legal writing courses.

A Conceptual Approach to Advising High-Profile Clients

Post author:Christopher Flowers
Post published:December 2, 2013
Post category:Legal Practice Popular Culture & Law Public Sports & Law

This blog post concludes the series on the Fantex, Inc. IPO by analyzing the need for competent, and honest, financial attorneys with respect to managing the wealth of high-profile clients.

It is hard to imagine that NFL running back Arian Foster received legal or financial counsel before signing his brand contract with Fantex. Under the terms of the agreement, Foster assigns 20 percent of his gross earnings to the company in return for a one-time payment of $10 million, intended to be raised through the company’s IPO. The contract remains effective indefinitely and grants Fantex the right to audit Foster’s finances. Moreover, the only earnings excluded from the 20 percent assignment provision are any movie and TV roles where Foster does not portray a football player, as well as any music that he produces or writes. The one-sidedness of this contract—and the fact that Foster actually signed it—shows that Foster’s advisors, if any, did not have his long term financial interests in mind.