Criminal Law Library Blog
REFLECTIONS OF A LAWYER’S SOUL
The Institutional Experience of Professionalism at
Thomas M. Cooley Law School
Edited by
Amy Timmer & Nelson Miller
“Professionalism is, as the title suggests, a reflection of the lawyer’s soul. It suggests a self-reflective and transformative way of examining and shaping the professional identity, consciousness, conscience, and confluence of mind, habits and other attitudes and activities that make a lawyer’s whole.” – Foreword
T”he editors of this work and other professionals at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School wanted to evaluate and describe Cooley’s professionalism efforts in a series of introductory monographs, in order to share those efforts with the law school community as well as with lawyers, judges, bar leaders, alumni, law students, other law schools, and prospective law students.
The recent Carnegie Report on legal education, “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law,” stresses that law schools do a good job of imparting analytical skills to their students, but often fall short in teaching them ethics, a sense of justice and professionalism. The study concluded that “law schools need to do a better job integrating the teaching of legal doctrine with a much stronger focus on helping students develop practical ‘lawyering’ skills and understandings of ethical and moral considerations.”
The editors claim that the Carnegie Report is at the forefront of that professional education reform movement, and that what it loudly declares should be done, is being done at Cooley Law School.
This book is divided into six parts. Part I, Vision, shows how a law school’s history, mission, and vision can be translated into shaping the school’s overall culture of professionalism. Part II, Knowledge, addresses how the knowledge dimension of a law school program, as fixed and stolid as legal doctrine might be assumed to be, can yet be influenced in different ways by aspects of a professional culture. Part III, Skills, addresses the skills dimension of the legal education program.
Part IV, Ethics, analyzes the ethics or professional identity dimension of the legal education program. Part V, Assessment, looks into the assessment of a law school extra-curricular program from the standpoint of professionalism measures. And lastly Part VI, Future, concludes the book with a look forward at the community stewards the law school hopes to produce.”
1 volume……………………………………….$69.95 Item: 63832 ISBN: 978-0-8377-1853-2 Pages: xviii; 393 Published: Buffalo; William S. Hein & Co., Inc.; 2008
CONGRESS AND SPORTS AGENTS:
A Legislative History of the Sports Agent
Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA)
Edited by Edmund P Edmonds, William H. Manz and Thomas J. Kettleson
In 1996, people across the country fell in love with Tom Cruise as the idealistic, hardworking sports agent, Jerry McGuire. He believed in his athletes and struggled tirelessly for their success. Unfortunately not all sports agents are as likeable as Jerry McGuire.
Today, there is a common perception of sports agents as unscrupulous, unethical, self-interested and dishonest, doing anything and everything to sign the next star athlete. Money, cars, jewelry, loans, parties or anything imaginable is offered by some sports agents to the student-athlete in
order to entice that professional prospect to sign with that particular agent. These types of
activities can have dire consequences on the athlete, who might lose their college eligibility, scholarships, money and credibility. In recent years, Congress has grown concerned over the
deceptive and unethical treatment of amateur athletes by sports agents.
Although a majority of individual states have adopted legislation directed toward the conduct of sports agents, the federal government found it necessary to enact Public Law 108-304, the Sports Agent Responsibility and Trust Act (SPARTA). Congress has recognized that many acts of sports agents go unpunished because of disparate, ineffective, or in some cases, a complete absence of state laws. This volume offers readers the legislative history of SPARTA. Copies of the law, reports, hearings, related bills and hearings are included in this work as well.
An additional feature of the set is an appendix containing state legislation in this area. The
Appendix includes the language from each specific state that enacted the uniform act while also including those acts from legislatures who charted their own course.
1 volume……………………………………………………………………………………$95.00 Item: 64504; ISBN: 978-0-8377-1623-7; Pages: 828p.
Published: Buffalo; William S. Hein & Co., Inc.; 2008 HEIN’S SPORTS LAW LEGISLATIVE HISTORY SERIES, NUMBER 3