Legal Practice – Page 71 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

Best of the Blogs

Post author:Edward A. Fallone
Post published:July 2, 2010
Post category:Legal Practice Sports & Law U.S. Supreme Court

Time for a new feature here at the Marquette University Faculty Blog. From time to time the editors of the blog will share links to some of the more interesting recent law-related posts appearing on the blogosphere. I will get things started.

Over at Scotusblog, Tom Goldstein has an excellent round up of the recently concluded Supreme Court term. It is commonplace to read broad generalizations about the Roberts Court in the media lately, for example during the hearings on the nomination of Elena Kagan. Is this an activist Court, rejecting precedent and beholden to corporate interests? Or has the Court found its moorings once again after years of drifting along according to the whims of Justice Kennedy? Tom takes a cold hard look at the evidence, and his conclusions may surprise you. You can read his post here.

What Causes People to Be Successful in Their Careers?: The Three Essentials of Effective Communication

Post author:Claude L. Kordus
Post published:July 1, 2010
Post category:Legal Practice

My name is Claude Kordus, a Marquette lawyer graduate of a time before most of the readers of this piece were born. In fact, only Professor Jim Ghiardi, our outstanding torts professor, maintains a connection to the Law School. I’m looking forward to being the July Alum Blogger.

While I started my career as a corporate lawyer with the Miller Brewing Company, I early on moved into the business world, where my law degree proved to be useful. I spent thirty-five years at Hewitt Associates, helping companies set human resource objectives and design human resource programs, including employee benefits, salary plans, incentive pay systems, stock option and stock ownership schemes, employee communication materials, and human resource policies and practices.

In this and my following blogs, I will focus on one question: What causes people to be successful in their careers? Whether you pursue a legal career or, like me, make the jump into the “business world,” I believe that those who understand and develop their “soft side skills,” not just “technical skills,” will be the most successful.

Clear evidence exists that career success stems as much from people skills as from technical skills.

Why Do So Many Divorce Litigants Represent Themselves?

Post author:Michael M. O'Hear
Post published:June 9, 2010
Post category:Family Law Legal Practice Legal Scholarship

In recent years, an increasing number of people seeking divorces have dispensed with lawyers. What explains this trend? Judi McMullen and Debra Oswald set out to find some answers by examining a random sample of 567 divorce cases from Waukesha, Wisconsin. Consistent with national trends, they found high percentages of pro se litigants (43.9 percent of husbands and 37.7 percent of wives). Given the relative prosperity of Waukesha County, these high rates of self-representation are probably not just a matter of litigants not being able to afford a lawyer. Rather, the data showed that people tended to represent themselves in the simpler sorts of cases. When complicating factors like minor children were present, litigants were more likely to obtain counsel. According to McMullen and Oswald, “This suggests that divorce litigants have good, common sense notions about when self-representation is feasible and when it is not.”

The data were not as clear regarding the effects of hiring counsel. For instance, cases with represented clients took longer to complete, but this may simply reflect the fact that these cases tended to be more complex.

McMullen and Oswald reported their research in a recently published article entitled “Why Do We Need a Lawyer? An Empirical Study of Divorce Cases,” which appeared at 12 J. Law & Fam. Studies 57 (2010). The article is also available here on SSRN.