ABA Journal Podcasts - Legal Talk Network

For more than three decades, Richard Susskind has been one of the profession’s most prolific voices in support of implementing technology with legal services delivery. The author of more than 10 books on the topic, his next one will focus on technology in the courtroom. “A better way of running state-based dispute resolution is largely using technology, rather than using traditional methods,” says Susskind. “Rather than hiring a lawyer, one might instead have an online dialogue with the other party and a judge and resolve a dispute more rapidly.”

In this special mega episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with all three finalists for this year's Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. Jodi Picoult, author of Small Great Things, shares how research for this novel changed her views on race and racism. Graham Moore, author of The Last Days of Night, discusses how he approaches writing historical fiction about real people like Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla. And James Grippando, author of Gone Again, talks about how he's been able to balance his work as a mystery writer with actively practicing law.

Even trained advocators don’t get everything they want at work. But what are some good strategies for knowing when to accept a manager’s decision, or continue to press for what you want? In this episode of the ABA Journal’s Asked and Answered, the ABA Journal's Stephanie Francis Ward speaks with Dr. Artika Tyner, vice president for diversity and inclusion at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. Tyner discusses how lawyers can advocate for themselves in the workplace, without getting in their own way.

Special thanks to our sponsors Amicus Attorney.

Richard Rothstein spent years studying why schools remained de facto segregated after Brown v. Board of Education. He came to believe that the problem of segregated schools could not be solved until the problem of segregated neighborhoods was addressed–and that neighborhoods were de jure segregated, not de facto. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks to Rothstein about his new book, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein says that federal, state and local governments passed laws and created policies which promoted racial discrimination in housing and destroyed previously integrated neighborhoods. In this interview, Rothstein discusses his findings and proposes remedies to rectify the injustice experienced by generations of African-Americans.

For years, Paul Lippe has been a leader in helping corporate law departments adopt the approaches used in the best and most innovative parts of their own companies—and in doing so, significantly changing the relationships with and the work done by their outside lawyers. A Legal Rebels Trailblazer and one of the original New Normal contributors for ABAJournal.com, Lippe’s career path has been all about change and innovation.

Although the Osage tribe had been forced from their ancestral lands by the U.S. government, through shrewd and careful bargaining they retained the mineral rights to one of the richest oil fields in the world: Osage County, Oklahoma. But instead of insuring the prosperity and safety of the tribe, the wealth of the Osage made them targets for what was later known as the Reign of Terror. The task of solving dozens of murders fell in the 1920s to the newly formed FBI and its young director, J. Edgar Hoover. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, author David Grann tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles how he first learned of this series of murders and decided to write Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. He also discusses the brave Osage woman at the heart of his story, Mollie Burkhart, who defied the local white-dominated power structure to discover who was responsible for the deaths of her family members.

Government entities at all levels often set aside a portion of work for minority and women-owned businesses, including law firms. But many people are unsure about how to land these contracts or receive certification. In this episode of Asked and Answered, the ABA Journal's Stephanie Francis Ward gets tips for program participation from Emery Harlan. Harlan is a Milwaukee employment attorney and a cofounder of the National Association of Minority-Owned Law Firms.

Special thanks to our sponsors Amicus Attorney.

Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum's parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local "white" school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, but rather than granting them relief, the unanimous Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation.

For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles discusses this little known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of “Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South.” Berard discusses the bravery of the family's decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over whether the "colored" category applied to Asian Americans took place. We also discuss Earl Brewer, a former governor of Mississippi, who took the Lums' case in a bid to regain his reputation, and how the immigration debates of the early 20th century have ugly echoes in today's political environment.

Plenty of lawyers hate to do legal research: It can be tedious and time-consuming, and one mistake can tank an entire case. For lawyers of a certain generation, the very sight of those two-toned, musty-smelling books that all look the same is enough to fill them with dread. For younger lawyers, electronic resources can be just as intimidating and mystifying. Luckily for Lisa Solomon, she loves that kind of work.

If you are a bystander and witness a crime, should intervention to prevent that crime be a legal obligation? Or is moral responsibility enough? These are among the hard-hitting questions discussed in a provocative and moving conversation with author and Holocaust education advocate Amos N. Guiora. In his new book, "The Crime of Complicity: The Bystander in the Holocaust," Guiora addresses these profoundly important questions and the bystander-victim relationship from a deeply personal and legal perspective, focusing on the Holocaust and then exploring cases in contemporary society.   Sharing the experiences of his parents, who were Holocaust survivors, and his grandparents, who did not survive, Guiora examines the bystander during three distinct events: death marches, the German occupation of Holland, and the German occupation of Hungary. He then brings the issue of intervention into current perspective, discussing sexual assault cases at Vanderbilt and Stanford Universities, as well as the plight of today’s refugees from war-ravaged countries such as Syria.   Guiora asserts that a society cannot rely on morals and compassion alone to help another in danger. It is ultimately, he concludes, a legal issue. We must make the obligation to intervene the law, Guiora asserts, and thus non-intervention a crime.