Marquette Law School in the Early Twentieth Century

The second installment of the symposia celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of Marquette Law School was convened earlier today. The same panel of scholars from the first session returned to discuss the period from 1908 to 1940.  Joseph Ranney began by explaining how this time period saw the bureaucratization and professionalization of both legal education and the bar, and how these trends shaped the development of the Marquette Law School. In particular, Mr. Ranney noted the importance of the creation of the American Association of Law Schools, which sought to establish an accreditation process for law schools, and the transformation of law school faculties from exclusively part-time/adjunct professors to a combination of full-time and part-time/adjunct professors.

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Representing the Vengeful Client

At today’s faculty workshop, Robin Slocum, the Boden Visiting Professor Law, gave a fascinating presentation of her latest paper, entitled “The Dilemma of the Vengeful Client: A Prescriptive Framework for Cooling the Flames of Anger” (forthcoming in the Marquette Law Review). Noting that lawyers and the legal system can sometimes become weapons for vengeance in the hands of an angry client, Robin suggested that client counseling can help both the client and the lawyer achieve better outcomes in litigation and avoid the psychological and physiological costs of such vengeance-seeking activity. Effective client counseling, she argued, should focus on uncovering the thoughts and beliefs that underlie anger in order to identify the more rational aims of litigation. In addition, Robin suggested that law schools may consider adopting courses that build lawyers’ emotional competency to engage in this type of counseling.

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Greenhouse on the Big Squeeze and Some More Employment Numbers

BigsqueezeThere is an on-line book club discussion at PrawfsBlawg, organized by Matt Bodie (Saint Louis), about Steve Greenhouse’s new book: The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker.  Yesterday, Steve himself responded to the comments made by the other participants in the book club. Here’s a taste:

For starters, I want to say that when I researched and wrote my book, The Big Squeeze, I saw that workers were suffering not just from one squeeze, but from several squeezes. There is of course an economic/financial squeeze with wages stagnating and health and pension benefits getting worse. Then there is a time squeeze with Americans working 1,804 hours a year on average — 135 hours or nearly three-and-a-half fulltime weeks more than the typical British worker, 240 hours or six fulltime weeks more than the typical French worker and nine fulltime weeks more than the typical German worker.  (Those of you who answer work emails at 11 p.m. know what I’m talking about.) The United States is the only industrial nation without laws guaranteeing workers paid vacation, paid sick day and paid maternity leave. (In the 27 countries of the European Union, workers are guaranteed at least four weeks vacation.)

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