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ABA Journal: Modern Law Library

by Legal Talk Network

Listen to the ABA Journal Podcast for analysis and discussion of the latest legal issues and trends the first Monday of each month. Also hear discussions with authors for The Modern Law Library books podcast series.

Episodes

This lawyer tackled lifelong anxiety to free herself from 'The Box'

40m · Published 21 Dec 12:00
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. It began as a series of writing exercises she used to make sense of her meditation practices. But it became an investigation into the mental and emotional barriers she constructed since childhood to protect herself–and a blueprint for dismantling the barriers that no longer served her. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles talks to Robbins about dealing with anxiety in law school and law practice; the positive reaction at her law firm when she opened up about her mental health struggles; and what Robbins finds unhelpful about self-help books. They discuss the difference between being "productive" and being mentally well, and how Robbins overcame her aversion to mindfulness as part of her healing process. They also talk about how people with anxiety respond when the dangers they perceive are real, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the months since the 2021 publication ofThe Box, Robbins has also dealt with a cancer diagnosis and many career changes, and she shares updates on her progress and projects.

Our favorite pop culture picks in 2022

39m · Published 08 Dec 06:00
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. Chavis, a dedicated home cook, shares her favorite recipe sources for making meals with her partner. Ward, the host of the Journal's Asked & Answered podcast, has podcast picks for those who like a little gossip and spice to their stories. And Rawles, who has been on a mystery kick, shares the series of audiobooks she's been listening to for the past few months. Do you have own favorites, or suggestions for what the Modern Law Library should be reading in 2023? Email them to us [email protected], and you may hear them featured in a future episode.

Can change really come from within the system? These 13 prosecutors think so

38m · Published 30 Nov 12:00
Miriam Aroni Krinsky worked as a prosecutor in Los Angeles County in the 1980s and 1990s as the War on Drugs was waged. Mandatory minimum sentences and tough-on-crime laws sent prison populations soaring and ripped apart families and communities. Krinsky believed that change was needed–and that it could come from prosecutors themselves. In 2016, she tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles, there was enough of a political movement behind the idea of reform prosecutors that the nonprofit Fair and Just Prosecution was founded to help elected local prosecutors promote "a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion and fiscal responsibility." Krinsky became its executive director. Over the course of two years, Krinsky interviewed 13 elected prosecutors from a variety of different backgrounds who share the dream of reforming the criminal justice system. These oral histories were then paired with portraits of those prosecutors created by formerly incarcerated artists thanks to a partnership with Mural Arts Philadelphia. It became the bookChange From Within: Reimagining the 21st-Century Prosecutor. In this episode, Krinsky discusses insights from the election cycles FJP has observed; the difficulty of producing a book likeChange From Withinduring the COVID-19 pandemic; and some of her favorite anecdotes she learned from the prosecutors she interviewed. She also responds to critics of the concept of reform prosecutors from both the tough-on-crime advocates and abolitionists who object to the carceral system entirely. Krinsky explains how prosecutors' discretionary power can be used to avert injustice in the system, and urges young lawyers and law students to consider that career path in addition to public defense positions to battle injustice.

'By Hands Now Known' shines light on cold cases of lynchings and racial violence

42m · Published 16 Nov 21:30
In the summer of 2020, when the murder of George Floyd was igniting protests in Minneapolis and around the country, it occurred to Margaret A. Burnham that “George Floyd” was a common-sounding name. Burnham is the founder and director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project at the Northwestern University School of Law, where she is also a professor. She went into the CRRJ’s archive of Jim Crow racial homicides, and a search revealed another George Floyd. The account of the jailhouse death of this first George Floyd appeared in a 1945 letter to Thurgood Marshall from a Floridian chapter of the NAACP. Floyd, a 46-year-old turpentine worker, was arrested in St. Augustine, Florida, accused of public intoxication. When Floyd protested a second search of his person at the local jail, he was beaten to death by the arresting officer. Aside from a coroner’s report, Burnham and her colleagues could find no evidence that the officer who killed Floyd in 1945 faced any investigation. “It was not entirely unforeseeable that we would find this name-fellow in our archive, pleading to be exhumed and put in conversation with the iconic inspiration for what would come to be known as the 2020 ‘reckoning’ with Black death at the hands of the state,” writes Burnham in her new book,By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners. “We count, and contest, because George Floyd counted. Number 1. And Number 2.” InBy Hands Now Known, Burnham looks at three interrelated themes: The way the federal government enabled the subjugation of Black Americans through both action and inaction; the relationship between racial violence and political power; and community resistance to Jim Crow that predates the “official” Civil Rights Era from 1954 to 1967. Burnham’s first chapter examines one such area that shows elements of all three themes: Rendition cases gave attorneys the opportunity to try to prevent the extradition of Black men and women to jurisdictions where they faced lynching or other violence. William Henry Huff, a Black lawyer in Illinois, successfully handled 77 such cases, Burnham found in her research. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Burnham discusses her book with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. She describes talking to family members of victims who never thought the full story of their loved ones’ deaths would ever be told; the way shopkeepers or bus drivers were essentially deputized to violently enforce rules against Black people in the South; and how her work in 1990s South Africa with truth and reconciliation efforts impacts her view of the potential for reparations efforts in the United States. She also contends that the lack of enforcement made the kidnapping of Black people by white people not a criminal offense, regardless of what laws were on the books. Burnham, along with her partner Melissa Nobles of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has also made her research available through the CRRJ’sBurnham-Nobles Digital Archive. Primary source documents such as FBI interviews, news articles and jury inquests into anti-Black killings in the American South during the early to mid-20th century are available, as well as more than 900 case pages for individual incidents.

How do you calculate damages in injury trials?

46m · Published 26 Oct 11:00
For any plaintiff who's been injured or any young attorney just starting out in the field of tort law, it can be daunting to calculate what monetary damages–and nonmonetary damages like pain and suffering–they should be asking for if they win a civil trial or are evaluating a settlement offer. Estimating what the future would have looked like if an accident had never occurred can seem more like a thought experiment than a scientific process. But there is a science behind it, says Dr. Michael Shahnasarian, and he has written a book,The Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Cases: A Damages Expert's Perspective, to explain the methodology. Shahnasarian has a PhD in psychology, and he's focused his practice on vocational rehabilitation and life care planning. As an expert witness, he's participated in at least 5,000 cases, he tells Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library podcast.The Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Caseswalks through the forensic process he and others use to estimate what someone's earning potential might have been without an accident, as well as the amount of money it may take to cover the person's living and healthcare expenses in the future. In this episode, Shahnasarian offers advice to young lawyers interested in tort cases; gives his expert-witness opinion on how best to reach jurors with information without overwhelming them; and shares with listeners his core beliefs about the value and dignity of work. Listeners of this podcast can get a 20% discount onThe Valuation of Monetary Damages in Injury Cases: A Damages Expert's Perspectiveby entering the code VMDCDEP22 at checkout at the ABA store. The discount code is valid until 8/31/2023.

Author and lawyer Scott Turow made generational leap for new legal thriller

29m · Published 12 Oct 11:00
Author and lawyer Scott Turow’s latest legal thrillerSuspectreintroduces readers to Clarice “Pinky” Granum, the granddaughter of attorney Sandy Stern—a character from the author's novelsThe Last Trialand his blockbuster debutPresumed Innocent.

Nina Totenberg's early life, NPR legacy and friendship with the Notorious RBG

51m · Published 21 Sep 11:00
In this special two-part episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Lisa Napoli, author ofSusan, Linda, Nina & Cokie: The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR, and we hear from Nina Totenberg herself about her new book,Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships. Totenberg appeared at an American Bar Foundation event to celebrate the launch of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Endowed Fund for Research in Civil Rights & Gender Equality. The history of National Public Radio, the outlet that made Nina Totenberg a household name, is shorter than many people imagine. Its first broadcast hit the airwaves in 1971. Napoli shares how NPR helped craft the careers of women like Susan Stamberg, Linda Linda Wertheimer, Cokie Roberts and Totenberg, but also how these women helped shape the network and national conversations. Totenberg changed the way the Supreme Court was reported on, says Napoli, and she discusses defining moments of Totenberg’s career. The second half of the episode is made of highlights from Totenberg’s conversation with E. Thomas Sullivan, the president of the ABF, in front of a Washington, D.C., audience that included former Ginsburg clerks. Totenberg spoke about her book, her friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and what the justice really thought about the Notorious RBG meme. She reflects on Justice Ginsburg’s relationship with Sandra Day O’Connor; the current “grey” makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court; and why Ginsburg chose not to retire in 2013.

9th Circuit judge shines light on Justice William O. Douglas’ environmental campaigns

46m · Published 07 Sep 11:00
Justice William O. Douglas could be known for his fiery opinions, turbulent personal life and longtime presidential ambitions. But Judge M. Margaret McKeown is shining a light on his groundbreaking environmental advocacy inCitizen Justice: The Environmental Legacy of William O. Douglas—Public Advocate and Conservation Champion. McKeown, who sits on the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was on a hike when she came upon a cabin belonging to two friends of the justice, Olaus and Margaret Murie. Learning more about the Muries’ history as environmental advocates and preservationists brought her down the path that led toCitizen Justice, she tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of the Modern Law Library. Seeing himself as entitled to advocate as a citizen for causes he believed in—despite his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court—Douglas did not hesitate to lobby federal agencies and the general public to protect wilderness areas from development. McKeown discusses how this could conflict with the code of ethics that she and other federal judges–but not U.S. Supreme Court justices–are bound by, and the implications for public trust. Douglas’ childhood in Yakima, Washington, was marked by frailty and illness, but he became an avid outdoorsman and hiker in his adolescence and adulthood, keeping up a brisk clip and covering many miles per day. One of his favorite areas to hike in the Washington, D.C., area was along the disused Chesapeake & Ohio Canal. When the editorial board of the Washington Post advocated for the construction of a parkway on top of the old canal, Douglas wrote a letter strenuously objecting, and invited the editors to join him on a 187-mile hike of the length of the C&O Canal to see the wilderness he wanted to protect. It became the first of his “protest hikes,” and marked one of his favorite methods for convincing others of the importance of conservation: taking people on camping, fishing and hiking trips into wilderness areas. A loyal New Dealer, one of the few areas of disagreement Douglas had with President Franklin D. Roosevelt was FDR’s bend towards conservation over preservation on public lands, McKeown says. She discusses the development of the conservation and environmental movements, in which Douglas was a powerful player. Douglas was the first justice to even use the word “environmental” in a Supreme Court opinion. She also delves into Douglas’ positions on Native American rights, which were supportive—unless they were pitted against the interests of fish.

Sick of meetings that go off the rails? Robert’s Rules of Order can help

51m · Published 24 Aug 11:00
It’s no secret that lawyers are asked to attend or preside over many kinds and types of meetings. From attending a professional association’s annual meeting with hundreds of fellow attorneys (as the ABA just held in August) to being asked to chair a non-profit board or preside at an HOA meeting, lawyers are often looked to for guidance. But not everyone has formal training in running a meeting, and there are huge differences between a small firm’s partner meeting with six lawyers in a board room and a Zoom meeting with 3,000 attendees. The good news–according to author, attorney and parliamentarian Jim Slaughter–is that no matter the size or composition of a meeting,Robert’s Rules of Orderhas advice for that. But you find the 816-pageRobert’s Rules of Order, 12th Editiondaunting, Slaughter has writtenRobert’s Rules of Order Fast Trackto give people a slim and accessible guide, and will soon be releasingNotes and Comments on ‘Robert’s Rules,’ Fifth Edition. Rather than hindering or slowing down a meeting,Robert’s Rules of Ordercan provide a structure that heads off potential problems at the pass. In his fast track guide, Slaughter brings up common problem areas and how to deal with them. He and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the viral videos of city council or school board meetings that have gone off the rails with attendees who are deliberately being disruptive. But Slaughter points out that sometimes a meeting participant derails a meeting by virtue of a talkative personality, and that, too, can be addressed by a chair who has a good command ofRobert’s Rules. Abiding byRobert’s Rulescan also help groups avoid legal jeopardy. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Slaughter and Rawles discuss why a book first written in the 19th century is useful today; best practices for running Zoom or hybrid meetings; the common mistakes Slaughter sees most often; and the misconceptions people have about meeting minutes.

Summer Pop Culture Picks and What Else We Lost When Roe was Overturned

47m · Published 10 Aug 11:00
It’s time for the Modern Law Library’s summer recommendations episode, where host Lee Rawles shares her pop culture picks with you, plus a re-airing of one of our older episodes that has become relevant again. In this case, it’s a 2018 conversation with Mary Ziegler about her bookBeyond Abortion:Roe v. Wadeand the Battle for Privacy. Ziegler shares information about other areas of the law in whichRoewas used as precedent beyond reproductive rights. Tune in to hear about what Lee has been reading, watching and listening to this summer. Recommendations: BOOKS Medicus seriesby Ruth Downie Sparks & Bainbridge mysteriesby Allison Montclair An Elderly Lady is Up to No GoodandAn Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossedby Helene Tursten Dial A for AuntiesandFour Aunties and a Weddingby Jesse Q. Sutanto Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking(memoir) andPlease to the Table(cookbook) by Anya Von Bremzen How to Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizingby KC Davis Denali’s Howl: The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America’s Wildest Peakby Andy Hall New Handbook for a Post-Roe America: The Complete Guide to Abortion Legality, Access, and Practical Supportby Robin Marty MOVIES Everything Everywhere All At Once RRR PODCASTS Brown History Podcast Dish Get Out Alive The Icebox with Isaac K. Lee: The Book of Lasso Maintenance Phase TV SHOWS Only Murders in the Building, Hulu Rutherford Falls, Peacock Ms. Marvel, Disney+

ABA Journal: Modern Law Library has 93 episodes in total of non- explicit content. Total playtime is 43:32:09. The language of the podcast is English. This podcast has been added on July 4th 2022. It might contain more episodes than the ones shown here. It was last updated on March 22nd, 2024 03:14.

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