Why Do So Many Divorce Litigants Represent Themselves?

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.

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The Naked Truth About Trademark Licensing

Irene Calboli has a new paper on SSRN entitled “A Critical Analysis of the Doctrine of Naked Licenses in Trademark Law.”  A trademark owner may license others to produce and sell goods bearing his or her mark, but  the owner must normally take steps to preserve control over the quality of the goods or the license may be regarded as “naked” and hence invalid.  Irene’s paper reviews and critiques the development of this doctrine.  She also proposes a new test for validity that focuses on the quality of the licensed goods instead of the degree of control exercised by the trademark owner.

The paper was published as a chapter in volume three of Intellectual Property and Information Wealth: Issues and Practices in the Digital Age, edited by Peter K. Yu.  The abstract appears after the jump. 

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Pickering a Fight with the Wrong Guy

Paul Secunda has a new paper on SSRN that provides the full story of the famous First Amendment case Pickering v. Board of Education.  Paul interviewed the plaintiff, Marvin Pickering (now in his 70s), and collected other historical records in order to supplement the background information supplied in the United States Supreme Court’s decision.  Pickering was fired from his job as a public school teacher in Lockport, Illinois, in 1964 after he wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the Lockport School Board.  Pickering challenged his dismissal all the way to the Supreme Court and eventually won reinstatement.

In addition to recounting Pickering’s colorful life story and the history of the case that made him famous, Paul’s paper also critically appraises the post-Pickering cases that have pared back the First Amendment rights of public employees.  The paper appears as a chapter in the book First Amendment Law Stories.  An abstract appears after the jump. 

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