Host of ABA Journal: Modern Law Library and Talk Justice, An LSC Podcast
Lee Rawles joined the ABA Journal in 2010 as a web producer. She has also worked for the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal and Legacy.com. She holds an M.S. in New Media from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and a B.S. in journalism from the University of Illinois.
Lee is the host of ABA Journal: Modern Law Library, the 2016 Lisagor Award winner for Best Podcast.
Laura Cowan has leveraged her background in finance–and her experience starting a boutique law firm during the early days of the pandemic–into a program to help people launch their own virtual estate-planning...
A doctor and lawyer discuss the success of medical-legal partnerships (MLPs) on Talk Justice. They describe how MLPs support communities, improve patient outcomes and help to alleviate the burden on the health...
Since it was seized from the Knights Templar in the 14th century, the Inner Temple in London has housed acolytes of a different sort: men (and eventually women) who serve as advocates...
In Chambers v. Florida and the Criminal Justice Revolution, historian and former ABA Journal reporter Richard Brust lifts the veil on a case that laid the groundwork for some much more famous civil...
The Rainmaker Genome Project surveyed 3,000 partner-level professionals in 41 firms. And it turns out that what makes a lawyer an effective rainmaker is not necessarily what makes a salesperson an effective...
Guests from a Kansas pro bono partnership discuss how private businesses and in-house attorneys can support legal aid initiatives in their communities on Talk Justice. In 2017, Koch was interested in making...
For nearly 30 years, Richard Susskind has written books asking lawyers to envision the future of the law and the legal profession in ways that stretch the imagination. Susskind has been one...
Execution by lethal injection is seen by many Americans as a less barbaric alternative than older methods like hanging, firing squads and electrocution. It is easy to assume that the process must...
Jorge Goldstein entered the fields of science and law at a time of immense change for them both. In the 1970s, huge strides were being made in biogenetics and microbiology, and in...
Guests from a Wisconsin program creating web platforms that help users solve legal problems discuss their Legal Tune Up tools on Talk Justice. LIFT, or Legal Interventions for Transforming Wisconsin, was formed by...
Peak performance in high-stress environments. It’s the goal for the basketball players taking the court during March Madness, but just as much for players on a different kind of court. Lawyers can...
What if we are asking the wrong questions when selecting American judges? Mark Tushnet thinks our current criteria might be off. “We should look for judges who are likely to display good...
Should you need a license for that? For law professor and antitrust expert Rebecca Haw Allensworth, there are huge problems with professional licensing in America—and her solutions might not make anyone completely...
For some people, retirement is an opportunity to kick back and finally relax. But for Roger M. Witten, it was a chance to finally tackle that book he’d been thinking about writing....
Legal aid and tech experts discuss self-help kiosks on the latest episode of Talk Justice. The under-resourcing of legal aid makes it impossible to provide meaningful legal help to every person who...
A federal judge’s new book is giving readers a rare inside glimpse at how a judge determines which prisoners deserve to have their sentences overturned. In his memoir, Disrobed: An Inside Look at...
It’s the time of year when The Modern Law Library likes to look back on the media that we’ve enjoyed: our annual pop culture picks episode. This year, host Lee Rawles is...
Ami Cullen grew up loving horses and competing in hunter/jumper events. But when it came to her career, she decided that law would be her calling. She graduated from law school and...
J. Craig Williams believes empathy is an important quality to be a trial lawyer. It’s served him in his profession, and it’s a tool he has also been using as an author...
Glenn Fine's career-long crusade against corruption might have its roots in his college days as a point guard for the Harvard basketball team. He played his personal best against Boston College–in a...
The first image conjured in your mind by the word “sheriff” might be the protagonist of a Wild West movie or Robin Hood’s foe, the Sheriff of Nottingham. But unless you’re a...
Experts discuss the professionalization of pro bono legal services on Talk Justice. Pro bono work is often thought of as a side project that lawyers perform, but legal aid organizations that can...
Most—though not all—of the 13 short stories in Company deal with members of the Collins family. Three generations of narrators bear witness to the changing fortunes of the family, and as with any witness...
Jill Barton spent the first decade of her career working as a journalist, with the Associated Press Stylebook always at hand to determine word usage and punctuation choices. But when she became an...
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...
Experts discuss the findings from a new survey on Americans’ knowledge of civil legal issues on Talk Justice. The recent survey of more than 2,000 Americans was conducted by The Harris Poll...
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...
Legal aid leaders from Florida and Illinois reflect on four years of remote court and consider the benefits and limits of virtual appearances, as well as the inconsistent policies surrounding them on...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
After cases like in Steubenville, Ohio, where the assault of an unconscious girl at a party by two boys was filmed and spread on social media, "the question gnawing at everyone, myself...
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...
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...
After 50 years as a professor at Yale Law School, Owen Fiss says his students are still idealistic and passionate about the rights won in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and...
In 2013, the ABA Journal named Renee Knake Jefferson a Legal Rebel for her work co-founding the Michigan State University’s ReInvent Law Laboratory and rethinking how legal services could be delivered to consumers. In...
There are lawyers who love the practice of law so much, they’ll only leave it feet first, in a box. But for those who’d prefer to exit the bar before closing time,...
It’s the time of year when The Modern Law Library hosts like to look back on the media we’ve enjoyed, our annual pop culture picks episode. This year, host Lee Rawles is...
Human beings have told stories about violence and victims from our earliest records. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, newspapers and magazines flourished on crime coverage. Hollywood has churned out crime movies...
Like many others, Jon Kung figured law school would be a safe harbor to weather the storms of the Great Recession. But after graduating in 2011, Kung changed course, becoming established in...
“You can’t think yourself out of trauma,” the introduction to Trauma-Informed Law: A Primer for Lawyer Resilience and Healing warns. “An analytical response is insufficient. As lawyers and law students, we have been trained...
Moving from a “win-lose” mentality to a “win-win” mentality has been a central focus of the field of negotiation and conflict resolution since the 1980s, says Sarah Federman. Working to walk away...
A Tennessee lawyer shares how her lawyerly research techniques prepared her to dig into her family’s history to develop characters in her novel focused on three generations of Black women and...
As both an attorney and judge, Thomas Moukawsher has spent the majority of his career dealing in complex litigation. And the Connecticut Superior Court judge would like to make the legal system—well,...
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...
The year was 1961. Freshly minted attorney James J. Brosnahan had been on the job as a federal prosecutor in Phoenix for two days when he was handed his first trial: a...
Subscribe to receive featured episodes and staff favorites once a month.
Newsletter Signup
