Modern Law Library

An attorney's research for a novel turned into an in-depth look at Long Island labor camps where workers lost their lives.

Brescia and Stern discuss their book, Crisis Lawyering: Effective Legal Advocacy in Emergency Situations, their experiences, and delve into the ethical issues the legal profession should be examining as its members are forced to make hard choices in crisis situations.

Sen. Mazie Hirono's journey to becoming an outspoken opponent to Trump and the GOP is shared in "Heart of Fire."

Can artificial intelligence increase firms' revenue while cutting down on billable hours? The authors of AI for Lawyers say it's possible.

In 'Watergate Girl,' Jill Wine-Banks battles obstruction and the era's sexism to bring Nixon and cronies to justice.

A different kind of wave of coronavirus cases will be coming to courts. Here's what you should know before you take a case.

In Let The Lord Sort Them: The Rise and Fall of the Death Penalty, Maurice Chammah shares how Texas became the country's capital punishment capital.

The rules surrounding what we wear can be unwritten social mores or codified in law. Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History explains why.

Most lawyers are cautious about change, but in The Modern Law Firm, Heinan Landa says technology adoption is key to getting and keeping clients.

White Fright author Jane Dailey discusses what America's history with lynch mobs can teach us about the attack on the Capitol.

Lee Rawles speaks with editor Victor Li and reporters Lyle Moran, Amanda Robert and Stephanie Francis Ward to find out which books helped them make it through 2020–and what listeners could be adding to their own 2021 reading lists.

Brittany Barnett shares how formative experience changed her and made her identify strongly with Sharanda Jones, an incarcerated woman Barnett met during law school.

John Howard Steel tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the unlikely history of Pilates–both the exercise phenomenon and the man himself.

Katherine James explains to the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles how she draws from her background in the theater to advise lawyers. James shares some of her war stories from her many years as a trial consultant and offers advice to listeners about how they can achieve the best outcome for their injured clients.

Legal ethics experts Lawrence J. Fox and Susan R. Martyn walk through the Six C’s” of legal ethics and share their advice for what lawyers most need to keep in mind during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Steve Wright discusses how he got into creative writing, what it's been like to teach students at the University of Wisconsin Law School remotely, and the possibility of turning The Coyotes of Carthage into a TV series.

Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman are sounding a warning about the direction of SCOTUS rulings on the separation of church and state.

What made 1950s America vulnerable to a man like Joseph McCarthy, a junior senator from Wisconsin? In Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, Larry Tye takes an in-depth look at McCarthy's life. Tye tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles that his interest in McCarthy was piqued during his research for a previous book, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon. Ethel Kennedy's me...

Do you know how many billable hours you can devote to a new case? Or whether you need to add another attorney to your firm? Can you afford to take time off from your practice, and if so, how much? If you're one of the lawyers who is kept up at night with worries about your firm's finances, you are not alone. Financial consultant Brooke Lively says that law school does not prepare most people for t...

We are used to hearing about wrongful convictions where a murderer walked free because an innocent person was misidentified. But when Montclair State University professor Jessica Henry was researching material for her course on wrongful convictions, she discovered that in one-third of all known exonerations, the conviction was wrongful because there had not even been a crime. This discovery paved...

At a time when the country is discussing how the justice system and policing can be reformed, it's critical that we avoid adopting reforms that have damaging consequences. In Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, authors Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law outline the way that well-meaning movements ended up funneling people into environments where they faced even more...

As a law professor at the University of Colorado Law School, Aya Gruber has seen her Millennial students wrestle with a contradiction that she has long struggled with herself. "On one side of the scale is a Black Lives Matter-informed belief that policing, prosecution and incarceration are racist, unjust, and too widespread," writes Gruber in her new book, The Feminist War on Crime: The Unexpected...

Alex S. Vitale explains the troubling origins of modern policing, why commonly suggested reforms like training and increased diversity have not been successful, and much more.

Thirty years ago, between 9% to 10% of federal criminal cases actually went to trial before a jury. That may not seem like a large percentage, but by 2018, only 2% of defendants received a jury trial. To Robert Katzberg, this represents a three-fold crisis. First, citizens are unable to participate and observe the judicial system through jury service. Second, trial attorneys are unable to hone the...

As early as the 1930s, presidents were considering putting the first woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. So who were these other candidates on the shortlist, and why did it take until 1981 for Sandra Day O'Connor to become the first female justice? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles talks with Renee Knake Jefferson and Hannah Brenner Johnson about their decade-lon...