The Red Velvet Lawyer

Over 340 Years of  Private Practice Experience  Among ASL's Faculty It frustrated me to no end when highly-ranked Washington and Lee University School of Law -- to much fanfare -- announced in 2008 their practice-ready curriculum for 3Ls students.  The press release from the school's Dean said: [We] are embarking on a dramatic revision of [the] law school curriculum, entirely reinventing the third year to make it a year of professional development through simulated and actual practice experiences.   This is one of the boldest reforms in American legal education since Dean Christopher Columbus Langdell pioneered the new curriculum at Harvard Law School in the late 19th century. What?  WTF?  Appalachian School of Law had created -- from its inception in the mid-1990s -- a practice-ready, experiential curriculum for all students (not just 3Ls) long before Washington and Lee announced its program!  But for us, the pedagogical approach was...

Hal Abramson, the author of   Mediation Representation: Advocating in a Problem-Solving Process , suggests that the following types of disputes or circumstances make mediation less desirable: ·         The party needs to establish binding precedent; ·         The party needs to deter future claims by establishing a “hard-ball litigation – no settlement reputation” (aka the Walmart strategy); ·         The party seeks validation or vindication by a person in authority who declares that the client was blameless, but the other party was a low-down, dirty SOB; ·         The party wants or needs to go for a litigated “jackpot” damage award, no matter the statistical chance of winning that award; ·         The parties are embroiled in a value-based conflict on which they see no room for ...