Newsletter: Vol. 1, Issue 3, December 2014
Season's greetings from the CGLP
The Center on the Global Legal Profession hopes that the fall semester was productive for everyone. It certainly was for us!
Here are just some of our activities over the past few months. Hoping all of you have a wonderful 2015.
Best wishes, Jayanth Krishnan, Professor of Law and Charles L. Whistler Faculty Fellow, Director, Center on the Global Legal Profession
Center collaborates with colleague at Sao Paulo partner school on history of Brazilian corporate legal profession
The Center has released a major study on the Brazilian legal profession, the first of its kind issued by any institution.
The paper documents how as early as 1913 American lawyers traveled to Brazil, partnered with local Brazilian lawyers, and served as key brokers for U.S. businesses seeking market-entry. Drawing upon ethnographies, interview data, and over 1,000 pages of rare Portuguese and English archival sources, the study highlights how these sophisticated legal elites capitalized on the lack of existing regulation to transform Brazil's corporate legal sector.
The paper, which will be published in 2015 in Law & Social Inquiry, can be viewed here. It was authored by the Center's director, Vitor Dias (a Brazilian lawyer, current Indiana Law LLM student, and researcher from FGV Law School, an IU partner institution), and third-year law student John Pence.
Reuters features Center research on Dubai international financial courts
Earlier this semester, Andrew Torchia, a reporter for Reuters, wrote a detailed story on the emergence of the Dubai International Financial Centre Courts -- a common law, English-speaking judiciary that emerged in 2006 to handle complex cross-border commercial matters in the Emirate. The Reuters article featured a report published by the Center on this subject, the research for which was funded by the National Center for State Courts.
Recent faculty research and scholarship
- Hannah Buxbaum presented her research this fall on "The Viability of 'Enterprise Jurisdiction'" at Vanderbilt Law School, Chicago Kent School of Law, and the University of Richmond Law School. The paper is forthcoming in the U.C. Davis Law Review. She also presented a work in progress on "Foreign Government Plaintiffs in U.S. Courts" at BYU School of Law; she was a commentator on a paper on international arbitration during a workshop on transnational litigation at Pepperdine Law School; and she attended the meeting of the Board of Advisers for the Restatement (Fourth) of Foreign Relations Law.
- Kenneth Dau-Schmidt is working on a book chapter for an edited volume on technology with Oxford University Press, Employment Law 2.0: Regulating the Employment Relationship in the Information Age.
- Charles Geyh has published a new article on judicial independence in The Annual Review of Law & Social Sciences. It focuses on providing an important literature review and analysis of how the concept of judicial independence has evolved in the scholarly discourse and within a range of legal and social science works.
- Bill Henderson has been focusing his research on the use of technology, data, and process to improve the cost and quality of legal services. As part of a larger book project, he is working on a cover story for the ABA Journal that chronicles how innovative law firms, legal departments, and various legal entrepreneurs are building interdisciplinary workforces to obtain a competitive advantage.
- Christiana Ochoa's documentary, There Is Nothing Else (Otra cosa no hay), was selected for the Bogotá Film Festival in October, and in November it was shown at the IU Cinema. In February 2015, the CGLP will co-sponsor a showing of the film at the Law School.
- Lauren Robel traveled to Brazil and Chile in October to meet with alums and leading scholars and administrators from institutions, including Fundação Getúlio Vargas, the University of São Paulo, the University of Brasília, and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
- Jeff Stake presented a paper he wrote with Professor Michael Alexeev (IU Department of Economics) in November at the Conference of Empirical Legal Studies at the University of California - Berkeley Law School. The paper discusses who responds to U.S. News & World Report rankings and how the magazine influences law faculty and lawyer-respondents, as well as law school applicants and employers who hire graduates.
- Carwina Weng recently conducted a workshop for the clinical faculty at Vermont Law School entitled "Backwards Design." The workshop introduced the faculty to using backwards design, a framework for improving student learning by designing courses, units, and lesson plans based on the learning results we expect. She will be conducting a similar workshop with colleagues from American, Vermont, and Michigan Law Schools at the AALS Clinical Legal Education Conference in May 2015.
Center fundraising for Stewart Fellows internship program surpasses $300,000
Since 2010, the CGLP has sent over 60 students to work as Milton Stewart Fellows in seven countries: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Japan, Korea, and Thailand.
Thanks to the generous support from all of our wonderful benefactors, this year the CGLP crossed the $300,000 mark in scholarships to aid our students who travel on these foreign internships.
Center events in Bloomington - and around the globe
In November, the CGLP, in partnership with the Center for Constitutional Democracy and the IU Office of the Vice President for International Affairs, welcomed Professor Chuma Himonga from South Africa. Prof. Himonga, who holds the Chair in Customary Law at the University of Cape Town, delivered a talk entitled: "The Impact of the Constitution on African Customary Law in Post-Apartheid South Africa: Recognition, Reform and Contradictions."
Also in November, the CGLP, together with the Law School's Office of International Programs, welcomed Chicago-based immigration lawyers Tejas Shah and Scott Pollock, who held a seminar on immigration visa options after graduation.
The CGLP's work on international lawyering was recognized by scholars at the National Taiwan University who invited the director to contribute to a new book from Cambridge University Press entitled Asian Courts in Context, which will be released later this month.
The American Bar Association's Section on International Law held its annual meeting in Buenos Aires in October. The Center's internship program and scholarly work on lawyers gaining access to foreign markets resulted in the CGLP director being invited to give a presentation on this subject. Click here for details on the program.
Center welcomes two new faculty members
The Center welcomes two new members to its community. Prof. Carole Silver, formerly a professor of law at Indiana Law and now professor of global law and practice at Northwestern University, returns to the CGLP as an affiliated faculty member. Carole's work focuses on how globalization has affected the legal profession, as well as on law firm structure and legal education.
Professor Meg Reuter, who holds a position at Brooklyn Law School's Civil Practice Externship Clinic, also joins the CGLP. Meg taught in Indiana Law's first-year legal profession course, and she has extensive experience in legal education and professional mentorship.