Bryan Garner offers a Magna Carta style guide

The Library of Congress has staged a magnificent exhibit on Magna Carta and its history. It is, after all, the 800th anniversary of the Great Charter of 1215. To commemorate the event, Justice Randy J. Holland of the Delaware Supreme Court has edited a book to accompany the exhibit: Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor, for which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has written a foreword.

Jan 1, 2015 5:52 AM CST

Does the UK know something we don’t about alternative business structures?

For two nations sharing a language and legal history, the contrast in the visions at play in the legal systems of the United States and United Kingdom is more than striking. It’s revolutionary. The debates in the U.S. go on: Should ethics rules blocking nonlawyer ownership of law firms be…

Jan 1, 2015 5:51 AM CST

Fiction contest winner: 'Good News, Bad News'

Good news and bad news alike arrive in the same way. In a letter, placed in a mailbox on the first floor of the office. Mailbox is a generous term. It's really a small wooden cubby with a name pasted on it using one of those label-makers grocery stores used to use. Thursday was no different; and when bad news came in, it sat there until 3:55, when I picked it out of the cubby and leafed through it in the mail room—not so much reading it as looking for the overall thrust of the decision. "Motion denied. Domestic violence order vacated." Signed and dated, Circuit Judge.

Jan 1, 2015 4:20 AM CST

How lawyers can craft a case narrative to spark jurists’ and jurors’ interest

Peter Brooks, the esteemed narrative theorist, tells an anecdote about a brilliant graduate student in his advanced narrative theory seminar at Yale.

Jan 1, 2015 2:30 AM CST

ABA urges the Treasury Department to exempt law firm clients from certain reporting rules

The ABA is urging the U.S. Department of the Treasury to incorporate language protecting the confidentiality of law firm clients into a proposed rule establishing customer due diligence requirements for banks and other financial institutions. The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, began the rule-making process in…

Jan 1, 2015 12:50 AM CST

12 legal-themed cartoons from 2014

This was the first full year that the ABA Journal’s Caption Contest ran, since we began this project in September of 2013. We’ve been blown away by our reader’s inventiveness, creativity and affinity for puns. Thank you to the thousands of readers who have either submitted captions of their own,…

Dec 30, 2014 2:40 PM CST

Cartoon: A cat and mouse in court? Do tell what’s going on here

Is this feline JD a friend or foe to this mousey client? Tell us what you think is happening in this legal-themed cartoon for a chance to win our January Cartoon Caption Contest and have your caption appear alongside the cartoon in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal. Submit…

Dec 30, 2014 10:37 AM CST

These 12 events and inventions which the ABA Journal predates may surprise you (gallery)

As we kick off our centennial year celebrations, we wanted to take a look back at the ways that the world has changed since the ABA Journal produced its first issue in January 1915. After all, when we first went to press, World War I was less than six months…

Dec 30, 2014 9:00 AM CST

10 most popular ABAJournal.com headlines in 2014

Each Friday in our Weekly Newsletter, we send out a digest including the week’s most-read posts appearing on ABAJournal.com. So which blog posts were most popular—though not necessarily the year’s biggest legal news stories—throughout 2014? This week’s special holiday newsletter will also note the most popular galleries and list-style posts…

Dec 30, 2014 8:20 AM CST

How does your firm mark the winter holidays?

The end of the year brings a flurry of holidays, bonuses and festivities–and many annual holiday letters which give law firms the opportunity to reach out to current and potential clients to build business or support their professional causes. We received one such imaginative card from Fix the Court, a…

Dec 23, 2014 1:24 PM CST

What changes would you make to ethics rules for lawyers?

This week, a Northwestern University law professor argued that in light of the revelations about lawyers for the U.S. government who condoned the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques for suspected terrorists, “an enhanced ethical regime” for the legal profession is needed. Professor Alexa Van Brunt suggested that a “do…

Dec 17, 2014 2:05 PM CST

All is not as it seems for 9th Circuit clerk in ATL founder’s new novel (podcast)

Dec 17, 2014 8:30 AM CST

Cartoon Poll: Vote for your favorite clown-court caption

No clowning around: The ABA Journal staffers had a hard time picking three favorites from more than 200 submissions. Now it’s your turn to pick the caption that you think fits best. Simply vote in the cartoon poll for one of these captions before Dec. 29: • “Sorry for the…

Dec 16, 2014 4:33 PM CST

What do you think has been the most successful law firm merger, past or present?

There’s been plenty of talk about law firm mergers this year, from the continuing saga of the Dewey & Leboeuf collapse to the hopeful new combinations of Squire Sanders and Patton Boggs, Locke Lord and Edwards Wildman and the “nonmerger” of Morgan Lewis Bockius absorbing much of Bingham McCutchen. As…

Dec 10, 2014 2:00 PM CST

Do you check work email outside of business hours? If so, when do you unplug, if ever?

In Germany, Labor Minister Andrea Nahles has called for national “anti-stress regulation” that would, among other things, ban employers from contacting employees after hours via phone or email, NPR reported this week. Hanns Pauli of the Federation of German Trade Unions told NPR that advances in technology and growing economic…

Dec 3, 2014 1:51 PM CST