Article
Brenda D. Gibson
Accompanying a notable shift in the legal academy to being more attentive to our students’ mental health, there must be an equal (or even greater) shift to focusing on trauma, mental health, and well-being in the broader profession. Significantly, trauma and its effects are compounded when combined with the challenges faced by underrepresented populations within the profession. To date, these challenges have been greeted by an ad hoc, piecemeal reaction to stress and trauma,10 which only inhibits wellness in the profession. Part I explores the current literature in both the humanities and the legal profession, beginning with a brief discussion about trauma to explain what it is and its impacts on the legal profession. Part II then takes a didactic look at the legal profession and what makes it so vulnerable to trauma, discussing some of the societal and economic drivers that make trauma so prevalent in the profession, especially amongst minoritized populations. Next, in Part III, this Article discusses the legal profession’s current siloed efforts to understand trauma in the profession and to improve well-being, and its need to better strategize a solution that ensures more.
Article
Samuel Kan CFP
The government and stakeholders in society must act within their span of control to eradicate excessive and illegal gun violence. It is not surprising that a majority of Americans “say gun violence is a very big problem in the country[,] . . . they expect the level of gun violence to increase[, and] . . . it is too easy to legally obtain
Comment
Dalton Springer
The term “checkerboarded land” has become associated with alternating public and private square-mile lots in Western states such as Wyoming, Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. In the mid-19th century, the United States was in the throes of Manifest Destiny. President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1862 Pacific Railway Act which aimed to connect the eastern United States with the newly acquired western territories by developing the Transcontinental Railroad. As an incentive for building the rail line, the federal government granted the even-numbered one-square-mile sections of land to the railroad companies, while retaining the odd-numbered one-square-mile sections for itself. The Federal Land & Management Act of 1976 makes public land, specifically land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), accessible to the public for recreation. Of the 2.4 billion acres of land in the United States, the BLM manages over 240 million surface acres and roughly 60% is privately owned.
Comment
James H. Curlin IV
It’s no secret: Artificial Intelligence (“AI”), for better or worse, is revolutionizing the world. The legal field and legal education at large are not immune to this explosion of possible uses for AI technology. However, as with any technological advancement, AI and Generative Language Models bring with them many challenges, including the implications of their use. One such challenge was vividly presented in the case of Mata v. Avianca, often referred to as “The ChatGPT Case.” Mata is a cautionary tale of the potential missteps that can trip up the unwitting user who naively relies on the lofty promises of programs like ChatGPT without exercising the due diligence and competence required of a legal professional. The core objectives of this Comment are three-fold. First, to identify some of the many ethical pitfalls that can emerge from the marriage of AI and the law, highlighting examples on display in Mata v. Avianca––the landmark case revolving around the misuse of generative AI. Second, to acknowledge the inevitable role AI is poised to play in legal practice and outline some basic guidelines that may help ensure the integration and use of AI in the legal field is responsible, fair, and ethically sound. Third, from the perspective of a law school student, to address the importance of implementing AI into legal education and the imperative of properly equipping future generations of legal professionals.