Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program Kickoff

With a terrific training session last week for our new volunteer attorney-mediators, I am pleased to report that the Milwaukee Foreclosure Mediation Program is moving forward.  You can link here for the website giving the background details (including generous funding by the city and state — see the announcement by the Dean here) and our training materials.  After the training, I have a better idea of how we reached this crisis (with 7500 homes in Milwaukee in foreclosure) and what options might exist for working this out. 

I don’t expect that all of these cases will magically work out (and some are absolutely ripe for litigation).  At the same time, I am optimistic that this program can help people save their homes.  We will start mediating cases soon and will be tracking not only our immediate settlement rate, but whether people are in their homes six months, twelve months, and twenty-four months down the road.

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The Obama “Hope” Poster Case — Mannie Garcia Weighs In

(This is the 7th in a series of posts on Fairey v. Associated Press. See below for other posts in the series.)

[Update (7/23): The court granted Garcia’s motion to intervene, which was unopposed. AP’s and Fairey’s answers are due Aug. 14, fact discovery will continue until October, and the next status conference in the case will be Nov. 20, meaning we will most likely not get a summary judgement hearing until 2010.]

With the crunch at the end of the semester, my series on the Obama Hope poster case petered out unexpectedly. Among the events I noted silently to myself in the interim were Fairey’s answer to AP’s counterclaims and a trio of NPR interviews on the case with Shepard Fairey, Mannie Garcia, and law professor Greg Lastowka.

There’s nothing like a fresh filing to get one out of the doldrums, however. On Thursday, the other shoe in this case dropped when Mannie Garcia, the photographer who shot the Obama photograph at issue, filed a motion to intervene in the case as a defendant. (Quick, Civ Pro students: what rule?) Garcia’s proposed answer, counterclaims, and cross-claims assert that the photograph is copyrightable, that Garcia, not AP,  is the copyright owner in the photograph, and that Fairey infringed his copyright. I’ll focus on two interesting aspects of the filing after the jump.

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The Apprentice

donald-trump2The National Law Journal recently reported that the law firm of Howrey & Simon has adopted an innovative training program for new associates.  Newly hired lawyers will serve a two year “apprenticeship” prior to being fully integrated into the law firm.  This program will reduce the number and the compensation of the law school graduates hired by the firm, and it is part of Howrey’s overall program to eliminate “lockstep” salary increases for its associates.

Lawyers in Howrey’s apprenticeship program will be paid significantly less than the going rate for first year associates at other large law firms.  During their first year, the new associates will take firm sponsored classes on legal writing and gain practical experience by working on pro bono matters.  During their second year, the associates in the program will spend several months “embedded” at client sites where their work will be charged at a reduced billing rate.  The law firm’s managing partner compared the apprenticeship program to the training programs typically employed in the medical and accounting professions.

 The Howrey program provides an opportunity to reconsider the entire continuum of legal education: a process that begins with undergraduate instruction, continues through law school, and is perpetuated by continuing legal education requirements.  From time to time, each stage in the continuum comes under scrutiny, as Rick Esenberg’s post on Reengineering Law School illustrates.  In my opinion, the continuum should be viewed holistically when we evaluate whether we are succeeding at training competent and ethical members of the legal profession.  Law schools, law firms and the state bar all need to cooperate in order to ensure that there are no gaps in the preparation that new lawyers receive as they start their careers.  As a member of the Wisconsin Legal Education Commission in 1996, I argued in favor of a program of mandatory skills-based CLE instruction for recent bar admittees.  Many of our students are undoubtedly pleased that the State Bar chose not to implement this particular Commission recommendation.

 Given my predisposition in favor of practical training, I should be supportive of the Howrey apprenticeship model.  Instead, I find myself troubled.  In particular, I am wary of the idea of embedding future corporate lawyers within a client’s legal department for any significant period of time.

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