Public Legal Services in Times of Distress

While the nation is not (yet?) in an economic depression, our “worsening recession” has catastrophically affected thousands of area families across the social spectrum. For those who were desperately poor a year ago, not much has changed except perhaps for having even less reason to hope — dreams of government bailouts are duly noted. Joining the ranks of the forlorn are middle-class types who are facing foreclosures of their homes, job losses, and attendant legal problems. (Economic distress begets a host of family-related issues, to take just one example). For both the old and the newly poor, to use that term loosely, one of their many problems is how to confront complicated legal problems when they cannot afford legal counsel. In sum, this is a time of increasing demand for legal services by the very people who are least able to afford it. So what, if anything, is being done about it?

It is a point of pride for me to be involved in two institutions that are well aware of these gaps and are doing what they can with limited resources to assist: Marquette Law School and the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee. Both the Law School and the Legal Aid Society confronted these issues long before the current downturn. Moreover, their focus has not been on criminal representation, important as it is, but on the unmet needs of indigents faced with a raft of traditionally civil legal problems. My purpose is to familiarize those who may not be aware of these efforts as well as to underscore the affinity between these institutions.

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The Company You Keep

Today I circulated my beginning-of-semester letter to students. I note it here because it gives me an opportunity to answer the question of the month (the month, admittedly, being this past November). That question was, “Who was your favorite law professor?” From the first post (by our Professor Papke concerning his Professor Bork) and throughout (including several posts by Marquette lawyers on some of our predecessors on the faculty), the conversation was rich and offered much to admire even secondhand.

I contributed only comments not posts, but take this opportunity now. I do it while exercising my prerogative (firmly established by Professors Murray and Morse) to redefine the question: appreciating, not just professors, but those from whom we learned in law school.

For my point, as I note in today’s letter to students, is how much I learned in law school from my fellow students. This was especially true of my closest friend in law school, now a partner in a West Coast law firm, but an accurate statement concerning numerous other friends and associates as well. Sometimes I learned legal doctrine, and other times it was more about different things, such as habits, that are not much less important in law and life. This learning occurred in study groups, during upper-level moot court, on a law journal, and in many other contexts.

I note this here, as we begin the semester, in order to encourage students to take this truth into account as they go about their activities this semester: time spent with fellows concerning the law—not just communing with one’s laptop, but in actual and intelligent conversation with other students—can be among the most valuable investments in your legal education. Truly was it for me.

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New Issue of MU Law Review

I’ve just received my brand-new, hot-off-the-presses issue of the Marquette Law Review, which has several articles I am looking forward to reading.  Here are the contents:

Nantiya Ruan, Accommodating Respectful Religious Expression in the Workplace, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 1 (2008) (SSRN version here).

Scott A. Schumacher, MacNiven v. Westmoreland and Tax Advice: Using Purposive Textualism to Deal with Tax Shelters and Promote Legitimate Tax Advice, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 33 (2008).

Michael W. Loudenslager, Giving Up the Ghost: A Proposal for Dealing With Attorney “Ghostwriting” of Pro Se Litigants’ Court Documents Through Explicit Rules Requiring Disclosure and Allowing Limited Appearances for Such Attorneys, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 103 (2008).

Barbara O’Brien & Daphna Oyserman, It’s Not Just What You Think, But How You Think About It: The Effect of Situationally Primed Mindsets on Legal Judgments and Decision Making,  92 Marq. L. Rev. 149 (2008).

Joan Shepard, Comment, The Family Medical Leave Act: Calculating the Hours of Service for the Reinstated Employee, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 173 (2008).

Charles Stone, Comment, What Plagiarism Was Not: Some Preliminary Observations on Classical Chinese Attitudes Towards What the West Calls Intellectual Property, 92 Marq. L. Rev. 199 (2008).

Congratulations to the student editors of Volume 92 for the successful completion of their first issue!

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