Putting the Legal Profession’s Monopoly on the Practice of Law in a Global Context

When considering the proper scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly, regulators and commentators may find it useful to compare the scope of the U.S. monopoly with the legal profession monopolies found in other countries. This Article surveys what we know—and do not know—about the scope of the monopoly in countries other than the United States. The Article finds that the state of knowledge on this topic is relatively undeveloped, that the scope of the U.S. legal profession’s monopoly appears to be larger than the scope of the monopoly found in some other countries, but that the “conventional wisdom” may be incorrect with respect to the scope of the legal profession’s monopoly outside of the United States. It discusses some relatively new developments that may contribute to our knowledge in this area, including reports from the World Trade Organization, the European Union, and the International Bar Association. It also suggests that relatively new organizations, such as the International Conference of Legal Regulators and the International Association of Legal Ethics, might contribute to our knowledge about legal regulation around the world

Knowing Their Audience: The Dynamics of Multiple Strategic Collective Action Frames by W.O.A.R. (Women Organized Against Rape)

Using the sociological theory of collective action frames and scholarship on the anti-sexual violence movement, the analysis discusses multiple frames (rights frames, counter frames, and injustice frames) used by Women Organized Against Rape (W.O.A.R). It shows that in correspondence with public officials, W.O.A.R used rights frames to advocate for reform. Meanwhile, in responses to media outlets and in their own publication, WOARpath, W.O.A.R used counter frames to deconstruct rape culture. The final two sections of the paper place this analysis in conversation with prominent critiques of the anti-sexual violence movement: its lack of intersectionality and emphasis on victimization and vulnerability. W.O.A.R’s activist methods and rhetoric reveal a disregard for how race complicates the issue of sexual violence. However, W.O.A.R’s use of victimization and vulnerability rhetoric is limited to correspondence with public officials. In WOARpath , W.O.A.R subverted victim frames through war motifs and calls for self-defense

From GATS to APEC: The Impact of Trade Agreements on Legal Services

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the treatment of legal services in the United States‘ international trade agreements. Although many individuals are now familiar with the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), far fewer realize that legal services are included in at least fifteen international trade agreements to which the United States is a party. This article begins by identifying those trade agreements and other developments including the 2009 Legal Services Initiative of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The article continues by explaining the structure of the GATS and comparing its provisions to the provisions found in the NAFTA and in other international trade agreements. The article includes several tables that compare the structure and content of the fifteen trade agreements applicable to legal services. The fourth section of the article reviews legal services-related implementation efforts, including GATS Track #1 developments related to the Doha Round negotiations, GATS Track #2 developments regarding the development of ―any necessary disciplines,‖ implementation efforts for other trade agreements, and developments that are indirectly related to these trade agreements. The final section of the article addresses the impact of trade agreements on U.S. lawyer regulation. It concludes that these trade agreements, which reflect larger developments in our society, have affected the vocabulary, landscape and stakeholders involved in U.S. lawyer regulation

Query-Focused Video Summarization: Dataset, Evaluation, and A Memory Network Based Approach

Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest in video summarization. However, one of the main obstacles to the research on video summarization is the user subjectivity - users have various preferences over the summaries. The subjectiveness causes at least two problems. First, no single video summarizer fits all users unless it interacts with and adapts to the individual users. Second, it is very challenging to evaluate the performance of a video summarizer. To tackle the first problem, we explore the recently proposed query-focused video summarization which introduces user preferences in the form of text queries about the video into the summarization process. We propose a memory network parameterized sequential determinantal point process in order to attend the user query onto different video frames and shots. To address the second challenge, we contend that a good evaluation metric for video summarization should focus on the semantic information that humans can perceive rather than the visual features or temporal overlaps. To this end, we collect dense per-video-shot concept annotations, compile a new dataset, and suggest an efficient evaluation method defined upon the concept annotations. We conduct extensive experiments contrasting our video summarizer to existing ones and present detailed analyses about the dataset and the new evaluation method

The Bologna Process and Its Implications for U.S. Legal Education

Virtually all European countries are in the midst of a massive multi-year project intended to dramatically restructure higher education in Europe. This project, which is known as the Bologna Process or Sorbonne-Bologna, began less than ten years ago when four European Union (EU) countries signed a relatively vague agreement. The Bologna Process has now grown to forty-six countries, including all of the EU Member States and nineteen non-EU countries. The Bologna Process participants have agreed to form the European Higher Education Area or EHEA by 2010; among other goals, the EHEA is intended to help Europe better compete in the higher education field. Although a number of U.S. higher education organizations are familiar with the Bologna Process and its implications for the U.S., the U.S. legal education community does not appear to have paid particularly close attention to these developments. This article provides a brief history and overview of the Bologna Process, including its ten action lines and information about its effect on European legal education. The article then explains the implications of the Bologna Process for U.S. law schools, legal educators and administrators, and the AALS. This article recommends several concrete steps that the U.S. legal education community should take in response to these developments

Hebrew Card Production from RLIN Records at the Klau Library

While the RUN bibliographic utility fully supports display and search capabilities of Hebrew script in bibliographic records, its card program is not able to produce cards that include Hebrew script. Hebrew Union College Library commissioned the writing of software to utilize existing RLIN functions to download Hebrew script records for local card production. However, modifications of the records are required to accommodate the idiosyncrasies of both RLIN and the local software

But What Will the WTO Disciplines Apply To - Distinguishing among Market Access, National Treatment and Article VI:4 Measures When Applying the GATS to Legal Services

One of the issues currently facing World Trade Organization (WTO) Member States is whether to extend to the legal profession and other service providers the WTO Disciplines for Domestic Regulation in the Accountancy Sector [Accountancy Disciplines]. The Accountancy Disciplines document applies to regulatory measures that would be considered domestic regulations under Article VI:4 of the GATS, rather than market access or national treatment measures under Articles XVI or XVII of the GATS. This paper argues that in order to meaningfully discuss whether to extend the Accountancy Disciplines to the legal profession, U.S. policy-makers and stakeholders need to understand the type of lawyer regulations to which the Disciplines might apply. The paper sets forth the principles that will be used to determine whether a particular legal services measure would constitute a domestic regulation measure that would be subject to any future Disciplines. The second part of this paper is an Appendix that provides specific examples of legal services measures. This Legal Services Examples List is intended to be a legal services-specific counterpart to the Examples list assembled by the WTO Secretariat. (The WTO Secretariat\u27s Examples paper does not address legal services specifically and is no longer publicly available.) The examples contained in this Appendix will provide a concrete context in which policymakers and stakeholders can debate the application of the principles discussed in the first part of the paper