Ray Brescia, a law professor at Albany Law School, has taken a hard look at the country’s legal system in his new book, Lawyer Nation: The Past, Present and Future of the American Legal Profession . In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Brescia tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the efforts in the late 19th and early 20th century to exclude people from the legal profession who were not part of the dominant social class, and how access-to-justice issues persist today as a result of som...
Feb 28, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 210
In Police & the Empire City: Race & the Origins of Modern Policing , Matthew Guariglia looks at the New York City police from their founding in 1845 through the 1930s as “police transitioned from a more informal collection of pugilists clad in wool coats to what we can recognize today as a modern professionalized police department.” From the beginning, race and ethnicity had a major impact in the policing of New York City. In a city where the top echelons of power were held by Anglo-Dutc...
Feb 14, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 209
After 50 years as a professor at Yale Law School, Owen Fiss says his students are still idealistic and passionate about the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a young lawyer in the late 1960s, Fiss worked with the Department of Justice to implement those laws. A classroom discussion in the spring of 2020 prompted him to draw upon his legal expertise and decades of experience to produce his new book, Why We Vote . In this episode of The Modern Law Library...
Jan 31, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 208
In 2013, the ABA Journal named Renee Knake Jefferson a Legal Rebel for her work co-founding the Michigan State University’s ReInvent Law Laboratory and rethinking how legal services could be delivered to consumers. In 2024, she’s taking a look back at more than a decade of research and experimental programs aimed at improving access to justice–the successes and the failures. On this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jefferson and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her new book, Law Democratiz...
Jan 10, 2024•52 min•Season 1Ep. 207
There are lawyers who love the practice of law so much, they’ll only leave it feet first, in a box. But for those who’d prefer to exit the bar before closing time, Kevin McGoff has advice on planning that next chapter. In his book, Finding Your Landing Zone: Life Beyond the Bar , McGoff describes his dawning realization that he was missing out on experiences while his life was dominated by his legal practice. He approached his law firm management team with a proposal to gradually decrease his ho...
Dec 20, 2023•46 min•Season 1Ep. 206
It's the time of year when The Modern Law Library hosts like to look back on the media we've enjoyed, our annual pop culture picks episode. This year, host Lee Rawles is joined by three ABA Journal reporters: Julianne Hill, Amanda Robert and the Journal's newest employee, Anna Stolley Persky. Naturally, the four discuss their favorite books, but they also have movies, TV shows, podcasts and even a play to recommend. From documentaries to audiobooks, listeners will find ways to occupy the holiday...
Dec 06, 2023•38 min•Season 1Ep. 205
Human beings have told stories about violence and victims from our earliest records. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, newspapers and magazines flourished on crime coverage. Hollywood has churned out crime movies and TV shows, based both in fiction and non-fiction. But after the incredible success experienced by the podcast Serial in 2014 and the documentary series Making a Murderer in 2015, a new wave of popular media exploring real cases of potential wrongful convictions burst upon th...
Nov 22, 2023•58 min•Season 1Ep. 204
Like many others, Jon Kung figured law school would be a safe harbor to weather the storms of the Great Recession. But after emerging from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in 2011, Kung changed course.Kung, who is non-binary, says the realization the practice of law was not for them hit after they helped the local prosecutor’s office achieve a conviction in a murder trial. They received a full-time job offer with that office, but decided to turn down the job offer and look for other...
Nov 08, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 203
“You can’t think yourself out of trauma,” the introduction to Trauma-Informed Law: A Primer for Lawyer Resilience and Healing warns. “An analytical response is insufficient. As lawyers and law students, we have been trained to learn only with our minds. But there are other epistemologies—other ways of knowing and interacting with the world.” Trauma-Informed Law , published by the ABA Law Practice Division, arose as a collaborative effort between Canadian lawyers Helgi Maki and Myrna McCallum and...
Oct 25, 2023•47 min•Season 1Ep. 202
Moving from a “win-lose” mentality to a “win-win” mentality has been a central focus of the field of negotiation and conflict resolution since the 1980s, says Sarah Federman. Working to walk away with a deal that pleases both sides was a huge departure from the idea that one side of a transaction will necessarily lose. But Federman, author of Transformative Negotiation: Strategies for Everyday Change and Equitable Futures , proposes that we can and should adapt our framing to encompass a “win-wi...
Oct 11, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 201
Admittedly, Tara M. Stringfellow became an attorney simply because her first book of poetry didn’t sell and she needed an income. But after a few years at Crown Castle in Chicago doing family and real estate law, she left, heading straight to the Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Northwestern University to get back into the writing game—this time with a lawyer’s sharpened pencil.
Sep 27, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 200
As both an attorney and judge, Thomas Moukawsher has spent the majority of his career dealing in complex litigation. And the Connecticut Superior Court judge would like to make the legal system—well, less complex. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Moukawsher and the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discuss his ideas and his new book, The Common Flaw: Needless Complexity in the Courts and 50 Ways to Reduce It . Instead of advocating for legislation to simplify the court process, Moukaw...
Sep 06, 2023•37 min•Season 1Ep. 199
It’s time for the Modern Law Library’s summer recommendations episode, in which host Lee Rawles shares her pop culture picks with you, plus a re-airing of one of our older episodes with current relevance. This year, that episode is our 2018 interview with Kathryne M. Young about How to Be Sort of Happy in Law School . Young used her background in sociology to gather data from students, alumni, faculty and law-school dropouts on their experiences during and after law school. Based on her findings...
Aug 23, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 198
The year was 1961. Freshly minted attorney James J. Brosnahan had been on the job as a federal prosecutor in Phoenix for two days when he was handed his first trial: a capital murder case. Twelve days into the job, he’d won his first jury trial, and caught the trial bug. (Though to his relief, the two young defendants escaped the death penalty.) For the next six decades, Brosnahan chased every opportunity to present to a jury, in both civil and criminal court. In his new memoir, Justice at Trial...
Aug 09, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 197
Jane M. Spinak did not set out to write a book arguing for the abolition of family court. She thought she would be making the case for a set of sensible reforms. But the more she dug into the history of the family court system, the previous attempts at reform, and the examples of real world harms the system had caused, the more she began to believe there was no saving it. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Spinak speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about her philosophical journey an...
Jul 26, 2023•55 min•Season 1Ep. 196
“If you don’t have it in writing, you’re out of luck.” That’s the common wisdom you’ll hear from TV judges, helpful uncles, well-meaning friends and even lawyers in your life. But while getting an agreement in writing is a best practice, in some cases you—or your clients—might have more options than you think to enforce a unwritten agreement. While the foundational principle of the Statute of Frauds holds that contracts must be written and signed to be enforced, there is a tool to create an exce...
Jul 12, 2023•40 min•Season 1Ep. 195
While directed at young children, a lawyer's book also speaks to lawyers who are moms, letting them know that being both can be a busy but fulfilling life. As Michelle Browning Coughlin, of counsel at ND Galli Law in Louisville, Kentucky, was raising her two daughters, she wanted her kids to understand what lawyers do. She worried that children only knew the type of lawyers who commonly appeared in courtrooms on television shows.
Jun 21, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 194
In his new book, The Supermajority: How the Supreme Court Divided America , Michael Waldman identifies three times the U.S. Supreme Court caused a public backlash against itself—and warns the court may be well along the path to a fourth massive public backlash. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Waldman walks the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles through the prior episodes of backlash, starting with the fallout from the Dred Scott decision in 1857. He explains the “switch in time that saved nine,...
Jun 07, 2023•54 min•Season 1Ep. 193
In The Shadow Docket: How the Supreme Court Uses Stealth Rulings to Amass Power and Undermine the Republic , University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck argues the U.S. Supreme Court is expanding its powers at the expense of the rule of law and public transparency. A case ordinarily comes before the U.S. Supreme Court after a long appellate process; receives a public hearing where the case is argued before the justices; then a signed opinion or series of opinions and a majority ruling are ...
May 17, 2023•47 min•Season 1Ep. 192
As chunks of the Berlin Wall were being torn down by jubilant crowds on November 9, 1989, James Silkenat was serving his term as chair of the ABA International Law Section. But he is the first to admit he did not immediately anticipate what that event would mean for the Cold War, or that monumental changes that soon be taking place across Europe and Central Asia. It was that event, however, that spurred discussions within the section about the need to help support countries working to establish ...
May 10, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 191
Heather Terrell, who writes under the pen name Marie Benedict, has written about novelist Agatha Christie in The Mystery of Mrs. Christie , and in Lady Clementine , she looked back on the life of Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine Churchill. Now, in her historical novel The Mitford Affair , she has turned her attention to three English sisters—Unity, Nancy and Diana Mitford—with the rise of Nazi Germany as a backdrop.
Apr 19, 2023•35 min•Season 1Ep. 190
Bruce Jackson grew up shuttling between Brooklyn and Manhattan public housing projects. His journey led him to Hofstra University, then Georgetown Law. He ditched a white-shoe firm job to launch a career in entertainment law, and represented some of the hottest hip-hop and rap artists in the 1990s. When Napster changed the music industry, Jackson left for Seattle and Microsoft, where he traded in his sharp suits for polos and khakis, and sick beats for mosh pits–briefly. As he tells the ABA Jour...
Apr 05, 2023•50 min•Season 1Ep. 189
The 1964 decision in New York Times v. Sullivan protected the civil rights movement, established the “actual malice” standard, and is the basis for modern American libel law. But in recent years, criticism of the case has grown among conservatives, with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas calling it “policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law” and suggesting that the decision should be reconsidered . In her new book Actual Malice: Freedom of the Press and Civil Rights in N...
Mar 29, 2023•42 min•Season 1Ep. 188
When Lauren Stiller Rikleen was approached in 2020 by the ABA Judicial Division to help compile autobiographical stories from women judges in America, a powerful motivating factor for her was to capture stories of the barriers the judges overcame in their own words. Rikleen, a former law firm partner and consultant who writes and speaks about the importance of cross-generational communication, tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles that she hopes millennial and Gen Z readers will benefit from the re...
Mar 08, 2023•44 min•Season 1Ep. 187
Some American patriotic myths are harmless; George Washington may have chopped down a cherry tree at some point in his life, but the popular story told to children where young George fesses up to the deed by saying “I cannot tell a lie” is made up from whole cloth. However, there are much more pernicious lies and misinformation circulated about our past as a country, and that misinformation is used for political ends. Princeton University historians Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer say they ...
Feb 22, 2023•32 min•Season 1Ep. 186
When former lawyer and bestselling author Meg Gardiner teamed up with Michael Mann for the follow-up novel to his 1995 crime thriller movie Heat , working with the legendary filmmaker was an eye-opener. “All the legends about his proclivities for research are accurate,” Gardiner told the ABA Journal's Matt Reynolds. “If you want to find out how to perform a tunnel heist in a Chicago bank, you better get a bank robber on the phone and chat with him for a couple of hours.”
Feb 08, 2023•33 min•Season 1Ep. 185
In Anne Bremner’s work as a Seattle-based trial attorney, she saw a disturbing pattern—that high-profile cases often trending on Twitter challenge the concept “innocent until proven guilty,” as cases are tried online, as well as in courtroom proceedings. In this episode, the ABA Journal's Julianne Hill speaks to Bremner about the case of Amanda Knox and why it prompted her to write Justice in the Age of Judgment: From Amanda Knox to Kyle Rittenhouse and the Battle for Due Process in the Digital ...
Jan 25, 2023•36 min•Season 1Ep. 184
Lawyer and author James Grippando made a name for himself writing legal thrillers, including the bestselling series of novels featuring Miami criminal defense attorney Jack Swyteck. He wanted to try something a little different for his new novel, Code 6 , and explore the dangers of big data and tech.
Jan 04, 2023•29 min•Season 1Ep. 183
Since childhood, Wendy Tamis Robbins experienced debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. Her perfectionism pushed her to achieve in sports and academics, and her high level of achievement masked her mental anguish from public view. While she found success in her legal and political careers, Robbins was negotiating with her own brain to get through her days, minute by minute. Robbins began writing her memoir, The Box: An Invitation to Freedom from Anxiety , while still in the process of recovery....
Dec 21, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 182
In our annual Year in Review episode, Lee Rawles speaks to her ABA Journal colleagues Blair Chavis, Julianne Hill and Stephanie Francis Ward to find out how they spent their downtime in 2022. We cover the usual lineup of our favorite books, movies and TV shows, but each participant also provides more niche content. Hill, who recently joined the Journal full-time after freelancing for the magazine, has a background in film, and she shares her favorite documentary projects she watched in 2022. Cha...
Dec 08, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 181
