ABA Journal

Your Voice

Friend's compassion—even in death—inspired my own 'David's Will'

Sometimes in life we are fortunate to meet someone who dedicates everything to a higher calling. For me, this person was David Breaux. While he had few financial resources, David was, by every measure that counts, a rich man.


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Lawyers must lead in efforts to preserve accessible, equitable and transparent rule-of-law system

As a nation, we have made the decision to be governed by the rule of law. This means that as a society, we have agreed to abide by a set of transparent, fairly enacted and fairly applied laws and rules that will govern our conduct in our private and public affairs.


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Hidden Talent Pool in Plain Sight: Corporate America wants you—for nonlegal roles

Management consulting firms and Big Four accounting firms have a secret weapon. It’s not particularly well-camouflaged. It’s there for anyone who bothers to look. Both of these thought leaders hire lawyers for a wide variety of nonlegal jobs. And they’ve been doing so for decades—everything from business development to crisis management to marketing.


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A Law Clerk's Transition: From umpire’s apprentice to fighter in the ring

After my 1L judicial externship at the Federal District Court, I was hooked on the law—and, more specifically, on the joy of writing for a judge. I knew I wanted to pursue a judicial clerkship—the pinnacle gig for someone who loves to mull over words and theories, or decide when…


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'United We Stand': Lawyers must play crucial role in bringing our nation together

Unity is strength. The wisdom of that truth has been known since ancient times as reflected in Greek fables, such as Aesop's tales about The Four Oxen and the Lion and The Bundle of Sticks, and Chinese stories, such as The Five Chinese Brothers.


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A Few Good Friends: Loneliness can be a JAG's toughest battle

It is not just the Police who find themselves “so lonely;” we too should find “no surprise, no mystery” in loneliness’s pervasiveness. Military lawyers, in particular, feel its unavoidable sting accentuated by the military attorney lifestyle. Together, let’s look at how to work past the inevitable to succeed where possible.


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Retirement: The final frontier

I recently retired after practicing family law for 25 years. I enjoyed the practice of law, but as you can imagine, my job had its share of stress and anxiety.


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Games Lawyers Play: Word counts and spacing rules in briefs appear open to interpretation

As teenagers, some of us played a game with our writing assignments. The goal was to make an essay or report appear longer than it actually was. Why? Because our teachers specified a minimum number of words or pages, and we struggled to reach that number.


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Narcissistic Lawyers and Artificial Intelligence: A band of dysfunctional brothers?

“Your honor, no artificial intelligence was used to generate content in this document. However, we would also like to disclose that there is someone in the courtroom who exhibits highly narcissistic traits and, therefore, is likely to lie, project, confabulate and inflate the truth.” With the rise of narcissism and societal celebration and reward of narcissistic traits, is this where we are headed? Should we consider such disclosure requirements?


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What's the key to community lawyering? Less lawyering and more community

On a two-week visit to Thailand with our program director to visit several True Costs Initiative grantee partners, including the Community Resource Centre Foundation, I learned that real community lawyering looks nothing like “traditional” lawyering, and it is precisely that characteristic that makes it such a potent tool for protecting environmental and human rights.


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