At age 15, Chelsea Filer tried to run away and live with her grandparents. A couple of weeks later, two large men, who worked with a transport company hired by her mother, woke her up in the middle of the night. The men took her across the border to a private residential school and treatment center in Mexico. “When children are legally kidnapped and trafficked across state or border lines, they lose their rights and any protections from the jurisdiction of their home state,” says Filer, who is now a youth rights advocate in Sacramento, California.

When it comes to formulas, arguably only Coca-Cola’s has been more successful. During its original broadcast run from 1990 until 2010, Law & Order became a cultural phenomenon. It won multiple awards, including the Emmy for best drama series in 1997, and it was a top-10 show at its peak of popularity in the early 2000s. With an emphasis on procedure as the primary plot device and less reliance on exploring characters’ personal lives or relationships, the success of the show spawned numerous similar shows and spin-offs while inspiring countless fans to go to law school or pursue careers in law enforcement.

States have filed more than 250 bills affecting LGBTQ people this year—including more than 120 anti-trans bills. Opponents say the proposed legislation promotes discrimination and prejudice and could negatively impact trans youths’ mental health.

“It is my goal—and my duty as a judge—to provide a trial setting that is perceived by all participants as fair, neutral and without so much as a hint of prejudice,” Judge Martin Clark wrote in a 2015 order. “Confederate symbols are, simply put, offensive to African Americans.”

As the world ground to a halt during the COVID-19 pandemic and parents scrambled for solutions, an uncomfortable truth emerged: Women are America’s default social safety net. It’s a regressive construct that has entrapped and hobbled working mothers across the spectrum—including lawyer-moms. The pandemic simply tightened the screws.

Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón knows how to cope with controversy. He faced it as police chief in Mesa, Arizona. And as San Francisco’s top prosecutor, he riled law enforcement groups after pushing for a host of reforms. Even so, more than seven months into Gascón’s new job as LA’s top prosecutor, resistance to his policies has reached dizzying peaks.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch both called New York Times v. Sullivan into question in dissents from a cert denial earlier this month.

This year, Ana Mclean paid the naturalization application filing fee of $640 and the additional $85 for biometric services using a loan from the Citizenship Loan Program. The initiative offers interest-free loans to permanent residents who live in one of New York City’s five boroughs, Westchester or Long Island.

Even with the firm having announced an official reopening date of Sept. 9 for its five offices across California and Washington, Klinedinst’s leaders do not expect to see a flood of colleagues returning to the workplace.

For the 30 jurisdictions offering a remote bar exam in a few weeks, there are hopes the technology has improved since last year’s administrations, when candidates reported issues with facial authentication technology, software crashes and problems uploading videos. However, those who work in academic support advise July 2021 candidates to develop a worst-case scenario plan.

A U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down earlier this month has flown a bit below radar compared with the term’s bigger cases, but it is one that might be of interest to anyone who has ever bent the truth on a dating website or on social media, shopped or checked sports scores on a work computer, or happens to be a fan of the 1983 movie WarGames.

President Joe Biden has made clear that he wishes to make it easier for immigrants to live and work in the U.S.—and he’s connecting this to America’s ability to succeed.

Philip Bobbitt, a Columbia Law School professor, is not sure when the ceremonies will take place in recognition of him being awarded an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II. At the moment, most of his time is taken up looking after his four young children, and they have different titles for him.

Through a legal career that spans more than five decades, Lawrence Fox has become nationally recognized for his leadership in professional responsibility and legal ethics and his commitment to pro bono work.

As universities set policies regarding coronavirus vaccines and in-person attendance, a New England Law Boston student has filed a federal court claim against the school, alleging the institution required him to wear a mask on campus, comply with social distancing policies and submit proof of receiving the vaccine

Thanks to an increase in law school applicants coupled with rising Law School Admission Test scores, getting admitted from the waitlist is much less likely this year, and in some cases, there are incentives for incoming 1Ls to defer until 2022.

Mary Ryan never aspired to be on the ABA’s Board of Governors, despite serving in other leadership roles in the association throughout her career. But after Kevin Curtin, the senior appellate counsel in the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts, died suddenly in December, someone needed to step in as the board’s District 2 representative.

Assembling sandwiches helped recent law school graduate Jacqueline Ingles focus during remote classes, and over the past year she made more than a thousand of them for the Chicago Help Initiative, a nonprofit group that takes food to pantries and free meal sites.

How do attorneys remain committed to work that affords few successes and often few forms of traditional validation, including commensurate compensation? Public interest lawyer Taeva Shefler spoke with lawyer Mallika Kaur and recent law school graduate Melissa Barbee about her volunteer work with prisoners’ rights and the lessons learned.

Public mandated restrictions to stop or slow the transmission of the disease, including mask mandates, limitations on public gatherings and business closures, have become a divisive political issue. Several Republican and right-leaning lawyers have filed lawsuits challenging these public health measures, leading to some successes in court along with both encouragement and negativity from the public.

Could police have avoided killing—whether the victims were armed or not? Advocates of de-escalation believe that many such deaths can be prevented. Yet what de-escalation means and how effective it is remain subject to debate.

The federal government does not have precise legal definitions of what it means to be a member of a particular race. And with no centralized federal guidance, federal and state agencies have pieced together definitions, applying them in disparate settings. In recent years, these inconsistent definitions have been criticized for allowing undeserving people to fit themselves into racial categories to benefit from contracts, jobs or university admissions slots intended for racial or ethnic minorities.

A slew of measures passed in California in recent years in hopes of expanding consumer or environmental protections further afield. Whether it’s product ingredients or data privacy or pollution prevention, California is frequently where such laws start.

Like their civilian counterparts, inmate fire crew members help protect people’s lives and property, and when they are released, some try to find employment in the fire service. For many, though, full-time jobs can be hard to come by.