Episodes
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Justice David W. Ellis has served on the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District for nearly 10 years. But readers may know him better as author David Ellis, writer of more than a dozen legal thrillers.
Ellis had enjoyed creative writing as a youth, he tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library. But during his college and law school years, he was focused solely on his legal career path. It wasn’t until he had been in practice for a few years that this changed. During a vacation at the beach, he suddenly decided that he was going to write a novel—and once that goal was set, he worked relentlessly towards it. And in 2002, he won a prestigious Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for that first novel, Line of Vision.
Both branches of Ellis’s career have seen tremendous returns. He made national news in 2009 as the prosecutor of the impeachment of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich before the state senate. He was the youngest-serving justice in 2014 when he joined the Illinois Appellate Court for the 1st District, which serves Chicago and Cook County. And along the way, he published 11 novels, including the four-book Jason Kolarich series. He was a finalist for the ABA Journal-sponsored Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction in 2012 and 2013. He has also co-written nine books with James Patterson, the latest of which (Lies He Told Me) will be released in September.
In this episode, Ellis and Rawles discuss his July release, The Best Lies. The germ of an idea that became The Best Lies started off with the notion of a main character who was a diagnosed pathological liar. When the book opens, Leo Balanoff, a criminal defense attorney in Chicago, has just been arrested for murder. Police have collected DNA and fingerprints at the scene that are a match for a college-era bar fight Leo was charged for, and the victim had an ugly history with one of Leo’s clients. Over the course of The Best Lies, twists and turns across multiple timelines and through multiple points of view begin to reveal what really happened. Ellis weaves a tale combining corporate espionage, violin concertos, police corruption and the Estonian mob.
Ellis also discusses his writing process, his 3:30 a.m. wake-up time, the similarities in his creative and legal writing, and how his judicial ethics concerns sometimes impact his editorial decisions. -
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The LSAT is facing competition from the JD-Next exam, and many states are reconsidering their licensing methods as the bar exam as we’ve known it sunsets in 2028. Kellye Testy, the executive director and CEO of the Association of American Law Schools, talks with the ABA Journal’s Julianne Hill about why those changes are happening now and what it means for law schools and students.
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There has been a lot of talk and concern about generative AI tools and how they are changing the legal industry.
A major worry for many lawyers is that these tools could replace them or make them redundant.
But what about the potential of generative AI to help lawyers generate business, market themselves more effectively, and make more money?
On this month's episode of the Legal Rebels Podcast, Gyi Tsakalakis, founder of AttorneySync and EPL Digital and digital marketing expert, talks about how generative AI can help lawyers generate business and market themselves. -
Do you need some distractions during vacation travel or while lying directly under your A/C unit and sweating? 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.
As states navigate a post-Dobbs world, a series of federal and state regulations known as Comstock Laws are being discussed as avenues to further restrict access to abortion drugs and birth control. In 2018, with Roe v. Wade still the law of the land, Rawles and Amy Werbel discussed the fiery namesake of those laws and Werbel’s book Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock. It sheds light on how a 19th-century U.S. Postal Service agent funded by the Young Men’s Christian Association created obscenity restrictions so sweeping that medical textbooks were seized and destroyed for displaying anatomical diagrams.
Rawles also shares some favorites from what she’s been reading and listening to since our 2023 year-end pop culture picks episode. If you have your own favorite reads so far in 2024, send your recommendations to [email protected] with a brief description, and we may choose to highlight them on our social media.
Mentioned in the episode:
BOOKS
The Three Dahlias, A Very Lively Murder and Seven Lively Suspects by Katy Watson
The Appeal and The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett
Buried in the Sky: The Extraordinary Story of the Sherpa Climbers on K2’s Deadliest Day, by Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan
Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentlemen Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail, by Stephen J. Bown
PODCASTS
Cocaine & Rhinestones
Beyond the Breakers
Reformed Rakes
Talk Justice -
Finances are a fraught area for many attorneys. Despite a high earning potential, new lawyers often start out with a financial disadvantage due to the opportunity cost of the years devoted to school and bar prep, coupled with high student loans. People who chose to get JDs instead of MBAs often find themselves having to operate as entrepreneurs to launch a small firm or solo practice. In The Lawyer Millionaire: The Complete Guide for Attorneys on Maximizing Wealth, Minimizing Taxes, and Retiring With Confidence, Darren P. Wurz addresses both personal finances and firm finances.
“A financial plan starts with goals,” writes Wurz, who has a master’s degree in financial planning and is a certified financial planner. “Be aware that money itself is not the ultimate goal of this plan. Rather, it is what that money can do for you that is the goal.”
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Wurz gives advice for attorneys at the beginning, middle and end of their working careers and tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the seven biggest money mistakes attorneys can make.
Wurz, who also hosts The Lawyer Millionaire Podcast, says retirement often looks different for attorneys than other professionals. Many lawyers would like to continue to practice at least part-time even past the age most other people retire. He says the goal of many of his clients is to have the financial security to have a “work-optional lifestyle” that will allow them to take on only the cases that really interest them.
One of the messages Wurz wants to convey to older attorneys is that their most important asset might be something they didn’t realize could be sold: their practice itself. The time and effort put into building a book of clients can also pay off at the end of your career, not just during your active years of practice. While it might take more time and planning to arrange than selling a piece of real estate, selling your practice to a younger attorney can provide continuity for your clients and a financial boon to your retirement.
While Wurz offers tips for how newly minted attorneys can start off on the right financial foot, he and Rawles also discuss options for mid-career professionals who are only now getting a handle on their finances. He also shares what his general advice would be for the thousands who have recently had their student debt unexpectedly erased through programs like Public Service Loan Forgiveness. -
Originalism is the ascendant legal theory espoused by conservative legal thinkers, including the majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices. But far from being an objective framework for constitutional interpretation, says author and attorney Madiba Dennie, its true purpose is to achieve conservative political aims regardless of the historical record.
In The Originalism Trap: How Extremists Stole the Constitution and How We the People Can Take It Back, Dennie traces the roots of originalism as a legal theory back to Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, though the Supreme Court rejected the arguments in the 1954 case. Its adherents argue the meaning of the Constitution must solely be determined by “the original public meaning of the Constitution at the time it was drafted,” and that there is a discernible correct answer to what that meaning would have been.
The theory gained popularity in the 1980s, with the late Robert Bork and Justice Antonin Scalia as two influential proponents. Scalia famously said the Constitution is “not a living document. It’s dead, dead, dead.” Today, originalism has formed the basis for decisions such as Justice Samuel Alito’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization opinion overturning Roe v. Wade.
“Despite originalism’s reputation as a serious intellectual theory, it’s more like dream logic: It seems reasonable at first, but when you wake up, you can recognize it as nonsense,” Dennie writes. “Originalism deliberately overemphasizes a particular version of history that treats the civil-rights gains won over time as categorically suspect. The consequences of its embrace have been intentionally catastrophic for practically anyone who isn’t a wealthy white man, aka the class of people with exclusive possession of political power at the time the Constitution’s drafters originally put pen to paper (or quill to parchment).”
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Dennie and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss how conservative originalists prioritize the time period of the Founding Fathers over the Reconstruction Era that produced the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. “We can’t fulfill the Reconstruction Amendments’ radical vision of full equality and freedom if we can’t be attentive to the ways in which we have been made unequal and unfree,” Dennie writes in The Originalism Trap.
While Dennie believes there are portions of the historical record that support broad civil liberty protections, she says she does not think originalism is a useful tool for progressives to use as a legal framework.
In place of originalism, Dennie has a bold proposal: inclusive constitutionalism. “Inclusive constitutionalism means what it says: the Constitution includes everyone, so our legal interpretation must serve to make the promise of inclusive democracy real. When the judiciary is called upon to resolve a legal ambiguity or when there are broad principles at issue, the application of which must be made specific, it is proper for courts to consider how cases may relate to systemic injustices and how different legal analyses would impact marginalized people’s ability to participate in the country’s political, economic and social life.”
Rawles and Dennie also discuss how lawyers and judges can push back against originalism; the legal rights and protections achieved by groups like Jehovah’s Witnesses and the LGBTQ+ community; why she dropped Jurassic Park references into the book; and how she keeps an optimistic outlook on the expansion of civil liberties.
“Justice for all may not be a deeply rooted tradition,” Dennie writes, “but fighting for it is.” -
Networking is something that comes naturally to some people. But if the idea of talking to strangers makes you break out into a cold sweat, there’s help and hope, says Deb Feder, author of the book After Hello: How to Build a Book of Business, One Conversation at a Time.
“You have picked a profession that is never finished meeting people,” Feder writes of lawyers. A practicing lawyer for many years, Feder now works as a business development coach.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Feder explains to the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles that her goal is to help attorneys have “curious, confident conversations.” They discuss conversation stoppers v. conversation starters; how not to panic when targeting the “cool client”; and how young attorneys can get past “the kids table.”
Lining up a roster of ideal clients doesn’t start at cocktail party mingling, Feder warns. A key to building relationships with the clients you actually want to work with lies in identifying what legal work you’re looking to do, and that requires some inner work. It also involves owning your value, Feder says, and she shares a story about how a partner in her firm impressed that lesson on her when she was a young attorney.
In After Hello, she says she meets people who feel too overwhelmed by keeping up with their legal work and personal lives to contemplate business development. “How do you balance the chaos of the day and allow technology to be the support and solution, rather than part of the challenge; how do you let it serve, not destroy you?” Feder asks. She lays out strategies to organize and cope, including how to stop letting your email inbox overwhelm you.
Feder and Rawles also discuss After Hello’s “30 Conversations in 30 Days Challenge” and the most common mistakes Feder sees lawyers making on LinkedIn." -
It seems like every time that there’s a major disruption or event that threatens to upend the legal industry, it spells doom for the billable hour. But that could be more out of hope than anything else. The billable hour survived the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, despite many people thinking—or maybe wishing—that it wouldn’t.
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From COVID-19 response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the results of 50 states having individual approaches to public health, medical outcomes and healthcare access raise troubling questions. A husband-and-wife team of University of Utah professors dig into the ethics of the American healthcare system in States of Health: The Ethics and Consequences of Policy Variation in a Federal System.
Leslie P. Francis is a professor of law and philosophy with a background in bioethics, and John G. Francis is a professor of political science with a focus on European comparative politics, federalism and comparative regulatory policy. The spouses had partnered on three previous books together. When looking for their next project, they decided to examine the consequences of states opting out of Medicaid expansion and what power federalism could have in protecting American citizens’ health. But soon more news events and landmark cases expanded their focus.
The result is States of Health. The book examines the tensions between state and federal powers in a number of areas, including reproductive rights; gender-affirming care; medical marijuana; public health and pandemics; right-to-try laws; patient confidentiality; and care quality and life expectancies.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with the Francises about their collaborative writing process, and what conclusions they have drawn about the benefits of federalism and states’ rights.
The Francises argue that since it is the federal government that determines citizenship and census decisions, state differences go too far when they make “basic decisions about who counts at all, and what it means to count.” They add, “Movement is a critical aspect of who counts: the ability to come and go, or to leave one state more permanently for another.” The Francises argue that freedom of movement for the purpose of medical treatment is crucial for patients, but also point out when states control licensure for medical providers, that too can restrict freedom of movement.
The value of 50 individual laboratories of democracy can be appealing to a scientific mind. But at what point can it be argued in the healthcare space that a federal government needs to step in, if the outcomes in some of those laboratories are decreased lifespans and higher mortality? -
When the Trump administration's policy of separating families at the country's borders was announced, opposition from the public and the legal community was swift. The outcry and judicial decisions led to a reversal of the administration's stated policy. But detention and family separation have a long history in this country, history professor Ana Raquel Minian says.
Minian, who immigrated from Mexico to the United States right before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has made an academic career studying immigration, incarceration and detention. As a young adult, Minian followed the news of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base being used to detain people who might be connected to those attacks. But in researching their new book, In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, Minian discovered the base was first used as a detention center under President George H.W. Bush to hold Haitian refugees.
Minian uses the personal experiences of four immigrants to walk readers through the history of immigrant detention in the United States: Fu Chi Hao, a Chinese Christian attempting to escape the Boxer Rebellion in 1901; Holocaust survivor Ellen Knauff, a war bride of an American GI who arrived at Ellis Island in 1948; Gerardo Mansur, a Cuban who joined the Mariel boat lift in 1979; and Fernando Arredondo, a Guatamalan asylum seeker who was separated from his daughter by border officials in 2018.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Minian shares details of these stories with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles. They also discuss the shifting motivations behind changes in the immigration system, parole versus detention, and how attorneys can help immigrants currently in detention. -
The lack of diversity when it comes to race, gender, sexuality, disability and social class within the legal profession is nothing new. However, the last decade has marked a gradual increase in diversity across all fields.
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“Trespassing plus time equals adverse possession,” Paul Golden writes in his new book, Litigating Adverse Possession Cases: Pirates v. Zombies. When someone has occupied or used a piece of property as though they own it for long enough, a court could determine that they are the rightful owner—regardless of what the paperwork says. It’s a concept more popularly discussed as squatter’s rights.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Golden speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the ancient concepts underlying modern adverse possession law; some quirky state laws; and why societies would allow land to be transferred in this way. They also discuss how the plain meaning of terms like “hostile” are changed when used in adverse possession cases, and Rawles raises a hypothetical—taken from real life—of a neighbor’s crooked fence.
During Golden’s first appearance on The Modern Law Library, he explained how the lack of a written contract could be navigated by a savvy lawyer. In his new book, Golden guides attorneys and their clients through the finer points of arguing for and against adverse possession claims. He shares some of the errors he’s seen pop up in adverse possession cases, and offers advice for how to avoid common pitfalls.
Modern Law Library listeners have been given a promotional discount code for Litigating Adverse Possession Cases: Pirates v. Zombies through May 10, 2024. For 20% off, go to the ABA’s online shop and enter LAPC2024 at checkout. -
James Patterson has written bestsellers in many genres. But as he tells the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles in this episode of The Modern Law Library, he has always been fascinated by legal thrillers, courtroom dramas and crime novels. He even considered becoming a lawyer, before his literary career took off.
In his newest release, The #1 Lawyer, James Patterson partnered with co-author Nancy Allen to tell the story of Stafford Lee Penney, a criminal defense attorney in Biloxi, Mississippi, who’s never lost a case. But after handing a high-profile murder trial involving the son of a mobster, Penney finds himself on the other side of the bench as a defendant himself, charged with murdering his own wife.
Patterson has written and co-written more than 300 books, including bestselling series like Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Maximum Ride. He had some writing tips for attorneys, particularly on how to work collaboratively. As Patterson tells listeners in the podcast, he is open about working with other writers on many of his books, and he finds tools like outlining absolutely essential. He also shares with Rawles how he thinks co-writers should handle interpersonal communication while working together.
Patterson says one of the major benefits of working with co-authors is pulling from their experiences to make his books more accurate and true to life. When he wrote The President is Missing with Bill Clinton, the former president could tell Patterson the inside details of how a Secret Service detail worked. When he wrote Run, Rose, Run with Dolly Parton, she walked him through the production cycle for a song.
Allen, who conducted more than 30 jury trials as a prosecutor in Missouri and taught law for 15 years at Missouri State University, contributed her firsthand courtroom experience to The #1 Lawyer. Patterson says they worked to make everything as accurate as possible—while still allowing for a good story. It’s the pair’s second book together, following a previous standalone novel, Juror #3.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Patterson shares some of his favorite law-related pop culture picks; news about new and ongoing projects; and describes a very special birthday event with Dolly Parton. He also discusses how his children’s series Maximum Ride got caught up in Florida book bans in 2023. For fans of Patterson’s breakout success, the Alex Cross series launched in 1993 with Along Came a Spider, the author shares updates about what’s next for the intrepid detective—including details about the upcoming Amazon Prime TV series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge.
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Three high-profile cases of sexual assault in 2012 followed a basic pattern: A teenage girl was sexually assaulted at a house party by one or more teenage boys while she was incapacitated by alcohol. The attacks were recorded and the photos, videos and stories were shared on social media or via texts. The photos and videos were used to ridicule the victims among their peers. Those texts and posts later became evidence in criminal cases. These incidents took place in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Missouri; and Saratoga, California, and sparked national conversations about youth, technology and sexual assault in 2013.
“The question gnawing at everyone, myself included, was: What were these kids thinking?” writes Anna Gjika, a sociology professor who studies crime and gender issues. More than 10 years later, Gjika has attempted to answer that question in her new book, When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age. She took a close look at the three attacks in 2012, but identifies a number of similar instances that have happened more recently.
One of the elements the public found shocking about the cases was how many bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious girls or the sexual assaults as they were occurring, without intervening. In talking to people involved in the cases and to teens in general as part of her research, Gjika found that the young people did not think of their social media as archival so much as “of the moment.” They filmed and posted what was happening around themselves because they were used to doing that. “Sharing an experience has become an integral part of the experience,” Gjika writes.
In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Gjika and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her research into generational attitudes towards social media and sexual assault; the promises and pitfalls of digital evidence in sexual assault cases; how social media can be empowering or degrading for survivors; the social responsibility held by the legal community and the tech industry; and what interventions could be effective to prevent such assaults from taking place.
Digital evidence like cellphone videos and texts can be extremely beneficial to prosecutors looking to prove incidents of sexual assault, particularly when victims are unable to recount their experience because they were unconscious or impaired during the attacks. But Gjika explains that this kind of evidence is not uncomplicated. The way juries perceive the evidence will still be filtered through societal expectations and prejudices. Defense attorneys do not have the same access to digital evidence from tech companies, and usually lack capacity to process immense amounts of data. The expertise, willingness and resources of police departments and prosecutors’ offices to seek out this evidence also vary widely. And the victims can be further traumatized by the use in court of images and video of their assaults, and the knowledge that the images continue to be disseminated on the internet.
In closing, Rawles and Gjika discuss what actions can be taken by schools, the legal community and the tech industry to prevent such attacks or to assist victims whose assaults have been digitally documented. Gjika believes educational programs and trainings for teens need to focus on peer groups and norms, rather than emphasizing individual responsibility, and “must be grounded within adolescents’ lived experiences, rather than on adult fears and anxieties.” She also argues that adults as well as teens would benefit from “ethical digital citizenship initiatives,” where concepts like privacy and online decision-making could be discussed. And she suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to assist survivors with removing digital content from the internet. -
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 some of those measures. The early American Bar Association is one of the organizations he names as a participant in the exclusionary efforts through its law school accreditation program, and he and Rawles discuss the ABA’s current efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion.
As someone who has worked in academia, the non-profit world, legal aid organizations and as a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, he says he’s come across many people who care deeply and want the justice system to function better. But without fundamental changes to the ways legal services are delivered, he does not think the access-to-justice issues can be solved.
A large part of Brescia’s concern that he expresses in Lawyer Nation is for legal professionals themselves. Brescia says the mental illness and substance-use levels within the profession demonstrate that greater care has to be shown for lawyers’ well-being and work-life balance. He shares his advice for making the profession more sustainable for the incoming generation. He also discusses how law schools and legal education can change. -
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-Dutch Protestants, the streets were patrolled by Irish and German immigrant police officers, sometimes enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act by snatching Black people off the streets and sending them back to enslavement in the South.
In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Guariglia and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss what the early period of policing in New York City can tell us about policing today. Rawles shares her own ancestor’s path from immigrant to police court judge on the West Side of Chicago (though the dates she cites in the interview are incorrect–Michael J. O’Donoghue emigrated from Ireland in the 1874 and was appointed to the police court in 1901.)
For Irish and German immigrants, a job on the police force was a path out of poverty and towards whiteness and political power, but you would be asked to prove yourself by visiting violence on your own community. African American community leaders hoped the appointment of Black policemen would curb police brutality, but the city was slower than other metropolises like Chicago, who hired James L. Shelton as the city’s first Black officer in 1871. Samuel Battle became the NYPD’s first Black police officer in 1911, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant and being appointed a parole commissioner.
Meanwhile, in neighborhoods like Chinatown, entire communities went without police officers who spoke the same language as inhabitants. The first Chinese-speaking officer was hired in 1904. That same year, the General Slocum disaster sent the city administration scrambling for German-speaking police officers to locate relatives in Kleindeutschland to identify bodies of the thousand victims of the burned shipwreck. Fears of “the Black Hand” led to the creation of the Italian Squad, and Guariglia shares the story of how the Italian Squad’s founder, Joseph Petrosino, ended up assassinated while on assignment in Sicily.
“Empire City” is an apt name for New York City, as it had international reach and drew on former colonial administrators. One influential police commissioner, Gen. Francis Vinton Greene, had been involved in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Tactics first used to subjugate colonists were put to use in the city. As the Progressive Era led to a preoccupation with eugenics, the New York City police were involved in international conversations about the characteristics of criminals and race science. The idea of molding the perfect police officers also caught hold. In this episode, Guariglia shares how the police departments decided they had to teach their officers how to stand and chew properly. - Show more
