The recent federal district court ruling striking down the Trump administration’s executive order targeting the law firm Susman Godfrey is the fourth similar ruling in response to orders punishing firms that took on clients and causes adverse to Trump’s interests. Now, each of the four firms that chose to file challenges in court has prevailed, [...]
In August 2021, the Taliban gained control of Afghanistan, and the judicial and prosecution system that had been in place for more than 20 years has since crumbled. Lawyers, judges, and prosecutors have detected a persistent threat, and things are only getting worse. While most Afghan attorneys have fled to the US or Europe, some [...]
Professor Homer D. Pithawalla is a practising advocate of the Supreme Court of India and Bombay High Court as well as a solicitor of Bombay High Court, Supreme Court of England and Wales and Supreme Court of Hong Kong. He is the senior-most Professor of Law at the Government Law College, Mumbai, where he has [...]
A year into the pandemic, the ABA’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility published ABA Opinion 498, providing guidance on how lawyers can comply with the Rules of Professional Conduct while practicing virtually. The ABA Model Rules permit the virtual practice, defined as practicing law anywhere other than in a brick-and-mortar office. But they [...]
Besides the fact that the legal system is an abstract entity incapable of possessing such anthropomorphic qualities, it has demonstrated a particularly bad track record for integrity. Some individual lawyers possess integrity; the law itself is a tool to be used for good or ill. But historically speaking, the mechanics of the American legal system [...]
An August 5, 2020 webinar organized by the University of Miami received a great deal of attention for remarks made by the National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) president Judith Gunderson suggesting that NCBE critics might encounter difficulties with their character and fitness evaluations. I was equally struck, though, by a remark made later in [...]
The Uniform Bar Examination is always given on the last Tuesday and Wednesday in July, even, it turns out, in the midst of a pandemic. On July 27, the date of the bar exam, 1,126 lives were lost to COVID-19. Despite this, today almost 200 future lawyers — myself included — sat in-person for the [...]
The three-year journey has ended. Clearing one more hurdle, you would join your chosen profession. But as you approached the hurdle, becoming a lawyer resembled joining a craft guild. Bar admission committees seemed intent on elevating custom over common sense. The infamous bar exam became a pandemic year proxy for antiquated legal industry rituals. What [...]
When I tell my friends that I developed an IOS app, they usually respond with a surprised, “I thought you were studying law and politics! Did you change to computer science?” When I explain that I did not switch but instead decided to study both, they often find the combination interesting but wonder how and [...]
JURIST Columnist Volha Samasiuk is an LL.M. Candidate from the University of Arkansas School of Law, and she was formerly a legal consultant for the Belarus Food Safety Improvement Project. She discusses professional stratification in the Belarus legal system and...
