Marquette Legal Writing Professors Contribute to Column in Wisconsin Lawyer Magazine

Beginning with the current issue, the Wisconsin Lawyer magazine (a publication of the Wisconsin State Bar) will publish  a new column on legal writing.  The first contributor is the most experienced legal writing professor on the Marquette faculty, Jill Hayford.

As the magazine explains,

Through this new column, the legal writing faculty at Marquette University Law School and other contributors will help solve your vexing legal writing questions with practical guidance. 

Professor Hayford’s piece is entitled, “Style Books, Web Sites, and Podcasts:  A Lawyer’s Guide to the Guides,” and it offers up-to-the-minute information and advice about the available writing style manuals, websites, and pocasts for lawyers.  In a sidebar, the Wisconsin Lawyer invites questions or ideas for future columns about legal writing.  “Your question will be answered directly by the MU writing faculty and may appear in a future column.”  If you want to submit a question for the column via Wisconsin Lawyer, email wislawyer@wisbar.org, subject line:  legal writing.

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Unions, As Shareholders, Use Bailout to Push Executive Compenstion Reforms

Unionyes My labor and employment law colleague, Phoebe Williams, who also teaches business associations, brings to my attention the roles unions, as shareholders, are seeking to play in the current government bailout scheme.

According to the Risk and Governance Blog:

The Laborers’ International Union of North America and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters are filing new proposals that seek compensation reforms at companies that participate in the U.S. Treasury Department’s bailout program.

In the supporting statement for these 2009 resolutions, the labor funds argue that the pay restrictions in the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) “fail to adequately address the serious shortcomings of many executive compensation plans.” Instead, the unions urge directors to adopt “more rigorous executive compensation reforms that we believe will significantly improve the pay-for-performance features of the Company’s plan and help restore investor confidence.”

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Appreciating Our Professors: Thomas O’Toole

It was over in the twinkling of an eye. The entire event took, at most, ten seconds, but in that incredibly brief time I learned that the study of law was the right thing for me. The time was mid-September, 1963. The place was the old Georgetown University Law Center at 5th and E Streets, N.W. The room was shaped like a bowling alley. One hundred and twenty-five part-time evening students were shoehorned into that room. At precisely 5:45 P.M., Professor Thomas O’Toole entered the room from the back. It was the only way in and out of the room in which Constitutional law was being taught. Professor O’Toole took one step, paused, and from the back of the room, spoke in a loud, clear voice, “Mr. Chase, why was the Court in Euclid concerned about the scope of the town’s zoning plan?” Before Mr. Chase could answer, the Professor took another step into the room, paused, and said, “Mr. Kossow, why did I ask that question ?”

A few seconds later, after I had choked on an answer that included the words “comprehensive plan,” the Professor walked to the front of the class and said, “Mr. Hubbard, do you agree with Mr. Kossow’s answer?”

Forty-five years later, I remember verbatim the incident. Professor O’Toole, in ten seconds, changed the direction of my life.

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