In 2008, the Miami-Dade County public defender’s office was in crisis mode. The average assistant public defender was handling 400 felony cases at a time and experienced attorneys were juggling 50 third-degree felony trials a week. Defendants suffered, attorneys were struggling, and as a last resort the PDs turned to…
What do a unisex hair salon, an ice cream parlor, a liquor store, a martial arts and fitness studio, and an outdoor furniture and billiards company have in common? First, they are all in New York state. And second, each business and its owners have challenged the state’s no-surcharge law…
Excuse us for waving our own flag, but we are exceedingly proud of our fifth-year selections for the ABA Journal’s Legal Rebels.
Our annual honors program for the change leaders of the legal profession has again found, thanks to your nominations, 10 outstanding new members. They join the 81 free thinkers selected in the previous four years of Legal Rebels. And though this year’s program was open to anyone in the legal services business, an interesting pattern arose as the final selections were made: Seven of our 10 choices are directly connected to legal education. Well, with the disruptive innovations of technology remolding the practice of law, it’s only normal that those charged with training the next generations of legal service providers are reshaping the way those generations are taught and what they learn.
Terry Carter, Stephanie Francis Ward, Rachel Zahorsky
In January, the New York City medical examiner’s office confirmed that it was reviewing more than 800 rape cases from a 10-year period during which DNA evidence may have been mishandled by a lab technician who resigned in 2011 after an internal review uncovered problems with her work. The review,…
If there’s such a thing as a typical military rape case, it might start like a typical civilian rape case. Men and women may be drinking together. The woman may pass out. The next day she would allege that she was sexually assaulted and claim that her drink was drugged.…
Even though her boyfriend had attacked her repeatedly, Lakisha Briggs of Norristown, Pa., says, she did not want to call the police for help. Even when he went after her with a brick, she did not want to call. When neighbors finally contacted the police during one incident, Briggs’ injuries…
Imagine a police officer at roll call. He gets a printout stating that at a certain time, on a particular city block, there’s a certain percentage chance that a burglary will take place. Motivated by the odds, the officer heads over to that neighborhood around that very time. While there,…
The ABA Journal has been exploring a fascinating romance between lawyers and popular culture. We’ve traced this connection through films and plays and television, and the conclusion is inescapable: Not only do lawyers seem to love pop culture; pop culture seems to love lawyers back.
But this year we’re raising the bar. We’ve attempted to survey the world of literature to find the best portrayals of lawyers and the law. To do so, we convened a panel of experts—a worthy group of particularly well-read lawyers and scholars—and asked for their nominations. We composed a ballot that included more than 100 of the greatest novels ever written—novels whose storylines revolved around lawyers or legal cases or the moral milieu of the law.
Kenneth L. Lawson sits in his office at the University of Hawaii’s law school and gazes out the window at a view of Diamond Head. “Does God have a sense of humor, or what?” he muses. Hawaii may feel like heaven, but for Lawson it carries a touch of purgatory.…
Not long after a 30-year-old Cleveland woman witnessed a man being fatally shot in the back, the gunman’s friends tracked her down and threatened her about testifying against him. At first, they intimidated her the old-fashioned way. As she walked home one day, a friend of the suspect came up…
