Legal Marketplace Research Articles

Illegal product purchasing in the experimental tobacco marketplace: Effects of menthol cigarette and cigarette ventilation ban

BackgroundTobacco regulations may increase demand for illegal cigarettes. We use the Experimental Tobacco Marketplace to estimate the impact of banning menthol cigarettes (Experiment 1) and decreasing allowable cigarette filter ventilation levels (Experiment 2). MethodsCrowdsourced participants were randomized into one of four groups (2×2 factorial design). Experiment 1 included menthol availability (yes/no) by purchasing option (legal only vs illegal available). Experiment 2 included filter-vented cigarettes availability (yes/no) by purchasing option (legal only vs illegal available). Participants were given an individualized budget to purchase tobacco. Percent budget spent was the outcome measure. ResultsExperiment 1, with a legal marketplace only, non-menthol cigarette purchasing was lower (p=0.010) and electronic-cigarette purchasing was higher (p=0.016), when cigarettes were banned compared to when they were available. With an illegal marketplace, switching to legal non-menthol cigarettes was less likely (p<0.001) and purchasing illegal menthol cigarettes was higher (p<0.001), when cigarettes were banned compared to when they were available. Experiment 2, with a legal marketplace only, cigarette purchasing was lower (p=0.010), when the participant's filtered vented cigarettes were banned compared to when they were available. With an illegal marketplace, purchasing the legal low-ventilated cigarette option was lower (p<0.001) and significant differences in illegal filter-vented cigarette purchasing were not observed, when their filter-vented cigarettes were banned compared to when they were available legally. ConclusionsWithout an illegal option, both restrictions decreased cigarette purchasing, but the menthol ban increased e-cigarette purchasing. With an illegal option, a menthol ban increased illegal cigarette purchasing, but decreasing filter ventilation did not.

Thinking Like Entrepreneurs: Qlegal’s Experience of Teaching Law Students to have an Entrepreneurial Mindset

To advise a client you need to understand what they do. To provide truly innovative, client-centred advice, you also need to understand how they think. These observations are especially true when working with entrepreneurs who may be otherwise inclined to move forward with their business with or without legal guidance. Entrepreneurs are distinguished by their growth mindset and resilience, appetite for innovation and comfort with taking risks and doing things themselves. As the legal marketplace in the UK becomes increasingly competitive (due to legal technology and the growing number of alternative legal service providers), law students need to adopt an entrepreneurial mindset themselves, both to navigate the legal marketplacefor their own careers and to provide commercially aware legal services to their clients. Law schools need to teach law students to think like entrepreneurs, and commercial law clinics provide the natural setting. This paper adopts a qualitative case study approach to examine how qLegal, the pro bono commercial law clinic within the Centre for Commercial Law Studies (“CCLS”) at Queen Mary, University of London (“QMUL”) teaches students to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. We reflect on the importance of students learning about and developing this mindset, for their own professional development and to service the unmet legal needs of the start-up community. This paper will also highlight the challenges faced by qLegal staff, including our own legal training and experience, our obligations to real clients and our students’ expectations. We conclude by sharing examples of how we are currently teaching our students to have an entrepreneurial mindset and our ideas for overcoming our institutional challenges and improving our offering even more.

Acid liberalism: Silicon Valley's enlightened technocrats, and the legalization of psychedelics.

The history of psychedelia within the New Left counterculture often implies a cultural alignment between psychedelics and progressive values or the promise of radical communitarian social reform. In contrast to these potentials, this paper examines Silicon Valley's engagement with psychedelics, a community which has demonstrated considerable financial and personal interests in these drugs despite promoting and advancing consistently neoliberal ends. This article studies Silicon Valley's culture of psychedelic drug use through extensive analysis of published interviews by tech industrialists, news reports, and recent studies on the tech industry's proliferation of mystical and utopian rhetoric. This work finds that psychedelics and their associated practices are given unconventional mystical meanings by some high-profile tech entrepreneurs, and that these meanings are integrated into belief systems and philosophies which are explicitly anti-democratic, individualist, and essentialist. It is argued that these mystical ideas are supported by a venture capital community which profits from the expression of disruptive utopian beliefs. These beliefs, when held by the extremely wealthy, have effects on legalization policy and the ways which psychedelics are commercialized within a legal marketplace. As Silicon Valley has put considerable resources into funding research and advocacy for psychedelics, I argue that the legalization of psychedelics will likely be operationalized to generate a near-monopoly on the market and promote further inequality in the United States that is reflective of both neoliberalism, and the essentialist beliefs of Silicon Valley functionaries.

Sociopolitical Externalities Impacting Worker Health in Washington State's Cannabis Industry.

The legalization of the production, sale, and possession of cannabis in Washington State in 2012 not only created the framework for a new legal industry, but also for a new regulated labor sector. In addition to typical occupational health and safety hazards associated with chemical and physical exposures, the transition from an illicit to a regulated workplace, the inconsistency between state and federal law, and the production of a unique psychoactive commodity crop that maintains value in the illicit marketplace creates a unique work environment with workplace concerns that are political, economic, and social in nature. We conducted a combination of semistructured key informant interviews targeted toward employers, focus groups that engaged employees, and an online survey with cannabis business owners and employees to identify concerns relating to worker health and safety. In addition to physical and chemical hazards related to their workplace, workers described health concerns that were a result of social, economic, and political forces facing the transitioning cannabis industry and resulting from an inconsistency between state and federal law. Important themes that emerged from these data included the legal and regulatory environment that the cannabis industry faces, cannabis as an agricultural good, crime, gender, cannabis consumption in the workplace, changing worker demographics, and emerging technologies in this rapidly evolving industry. The unique sociopolitical challenges for occupational health and safety that we identified among cannabis workers in Washington State are especially relevant as other states and nations follow the example of Washington State in legalizing the widespread commercial cultivation, sale, and use of cannabis. As other states and nations legalize, it will be important for employers, public health practitioners, and regulators to recognize how transitioning from an illicit to a legal marketplace impacts worker health. Further, understanding the challenges that result in transitioning a cannabis workforce may be extrapolated in the future to better understand how transitioning other goods and services from an unregulated to a regulated marketplace may impact worker health.

Innovation: A New Key Discipline for Lawyers and Legal Education

Over past two years, I have interviewed hundreds of in-house and law firm lawyers from around globe to explore changing legal marketplace, expectations of clients, and innovation in law. One of my main conclusions is that we are experiencing an Innovation Tournament in Law and almost everyone is playing in it. As I explain in more detail in my book, Legal Upheaval: A Guide to Creativity, Collaboration, and Innovation in Law, driven by a combination of technology, socio-economics, and globality, we are witnessing innovation on almost every legal dimension, including how legal services are priced, packaged, sourced, and delivered. Importantly, this innovation is not only coming from legal tech startups and new law companies. Law firms, Big Four, and corporate legal departments are creating innovations of their own including new services, products, tools, and, importantly, new processes. Even those that aren't creating innovations are playing in Innovation Tournament by utilizing innovations (or exapting them) to become more efficient and deliver better service. Although we are not yet seeing disruption in law marketplace in Clayton Christensen sense, all lawyers should care about Innovation Tournament regardless and here's why: Lawyers of all types, from big law to small and mid-size firms, from government to in-house, and even solo lawyers, are being challenged to change way they work. Clients are asking their lawyers to (and often with others outside their organization or departments). However, lawyers don't know what their clients are asking for when they ask for innovation or how to do it—or both. The good news is, however, that my interviews and my experience working with over 210 teams of lawyers and their clients on innovation journeys, indicate that what clients are really asking for with the call to innovate is a new type and level of collaboration and client service. The evidence suggests that our clients' call for us to is actually a call for service transformation in disguise. Whether they want an innovation in and of itself or not, our clients want lawyers to hone mindset, skillset, and behavior of innovators. The problem with this is that many lawyers are ill-equipped to meet these new demands. Some combination of our temperament, training, and professional identity seems to work against us when we try to espouse DNA of innovators.This is why new discipline for practicing and aspiring lawyers needs to be innovation. This chapter was first published by Stampfli Verlag in book: New Suits: Appetite for Disruption in Legal World, co-curated by me and Dr. Guenther Dobrauz. It begins by demonstrating that clients' call for innovation is really a call for transformation in service from their lawyers. It then explores why answering this call can be problematic for lawyers. It seeks to show that lawyers' professional identity, training, and temperament (along with extrinsic and intrinsic motivation) make it difficult for lawyers to adopt collaborative, creative mindset and skillset of innovators. This chapter recommends that innovation be incorporated as a new key discipline at both law school and executive education (continuing education) level because in process of learning how to innovate, lawyers hone mindset, skillset, and behaviors that clients desire. In support of this contention, it reveals that, as an added benefit, by honing innovator's DNA, lawyers also grow into inclusive leaders our society needs us to be. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for lawyers to help them better collaborate towards innovation along with a pie-in-the-sky call to legal universe to make innovation new key discipline for practicing and aspiring lawyers.

Teaching public law in a comparative paradigm: virtues and vices

ABSTRACTComparison in legal education matters. In its mission statement, the International Society of Public Law suggests that, “a full explication and understanding of today’s ‘constitutional’ [law] cannot take place in isolation from other branches of public law or in a context that is exclusively national”. Not only is comparative content of itself enlightening, but this paper argues comparison as a teaching method has at least four virtues. First, teaching in a comparative paradigm better prepares graduates for an interconnected and global legal marketplace. Second, it helps illuminate curriculum content. Third, it makes for good citizenry. And, fourth, it enhances the research/teaching nexus. In so doing, this paper explores the use of comparative law as a teaching methodology in core public law subjects rather than by way of additional curriculum content. As with all things, however, where there are virtues, there are also vices. In this context, such vices include questions of relevance and threats to space, time and coherence in legal education. To that end, the disadvantages of comparative approaches in teaching public law are also considered.

The Double Life of Law Schools

The Double Life of Law Schools

The Money Lever: Analyzing the Effect of Increasing Financial Aid Awards on Post-Recession Law School Matriculation

In the wake of recent dramatic reductions in the demand for legal education, law schools are reacting to the changed marketplace in ways that reveal Coasian “firm behavior” by responding to perverse incentives inherent in the competitive legal education marketplace. For example, to fill empty seats, law schools are enrolling students with lower GPA and LSAT scores than before 2010. Also, new evidence suggests that financial aid award allocation might be influenced by increased pressure to meet minimum enrollment requirements since the Recession. These trends evince market responses on the part of providers of legal education — law schools — as well as consumers of legal education — law students. This study aims to isolate the impact of one such firm behavior: financial aid award allocation. In the competition for shrinking pools of potential law students, law schools can discount the expected cost of attendance through institutionally-provided financial aid awards. This study assesses this trend — the effect of increasing median financial aid award amounts on matriculant enrollment totals and yield rates, controlling for law school and law student covariates — through two competing, but not mutually exclusive, theoretical frameworks. The rational choice theory, which holds that demand for legal education is determined by the exchange of information about costs and benefits. Scarce resource theory suggests that, like most institutional scholarships, the majority of law school financial aid awards are cross-subsidized.Employing the use of OLS and fixed effects regression specifications — looking within year, to account for differences in cohorts, as well as within school or U.S. News & World Report peer review rating tier — this study finds evidence of (1) students’ preference to consume subsidized legal education; (2) scarce resources theory; and (3) rational choice theory. These results can be explained as a market response by both law schools and students: reacting to labor market outcomes, as demand for legal education declines and fewer students accept the offers of admission and financial aid awards, the share of the financial aid awards to which law schools avail the students who do accept offers of admission increases. These findings bear out when employing a robust multiple fixed effects specification looking within year and peer reviewed rating tier. It is hoped that this study will contribute to the understanding of law schools as competitive market participants.

Designer steroids - over-the-counter supplements and their androgenic component: review of an increasing problem.

Colloquially referred to by various misleading monikers ('pro-hormones', 'natural steroids', 'testosterone boosters', etc.) designer anabolic steroids have been popular now for over a decade as a way to achieve classic anabolic steroid-like results from products sold in the legal marketplace. Recent evidence suggests that anabolic steroid use may be the most common cause of hypogonadism in men of reproductive age. Despite recent regulatory efforts that have banned specific compounds, many anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) remain available in over-the-counter dietary supplements that are legally sold in the United States. Severe side effects including hepatotoxicity, cholestasis, renal failure, hypogonadism, gynecomastia, and infertility have been reported secondary to the use of these products. While some of these side effects may be reversible, more aggressive use may result in more permanent end-organ damage as has been previously described for the case of aggressive AAS users (Rahnema et al., Fertil Steril, 2014). Designer AAS remain easily available for purchase in over-the-counter bodybuilding supplements and these products appear to be increasingly popular, despite the known health risks associated with their use. We conducted a systematic search to identify the designer steroids that are most commonly sold in dietary supplements as of April 2014 and review what is known regarding their potency and toxicity. We propose that the impact of AAS use on the reproductive and hormonal health of men is underestimated in the literature owing to previous studies' failure to account for designer steroid use. Lastly, we make clinical recommendations to help physicians steer patients away from potentially harmful supplements, and summarize key regulatory obstacles that have allowed potent androgens to remain unregulated in the legal marketplace.

Tomorrow's Lawyers

MY original motivation in writing my latest book, Tomorrow's Lawyers, was to provide young and aspiring lawyers with some sense of what the future might hold. When I studied law in the late 1970s and early 1980s, my fellow students and I did not anticipate major upheaval in the legal world. We expected law firms to grow but we did not anticipate major changes in the way in which lawyers would advise their clients or in the manner in which our courts would operate. In contrast, looking 30 years ahead, I think it unimaginable that our legal systems will not undergo vast change. I say this because I believe there to be three drivers of change that will combine to transform the legal landscape, radically and internationally. My first driver of change is growing cost pressures on lawyers. I call this the for challenge--how can we deliver more legal service at less cost? This challenge is relevant for all clients, from general counsel in the world's largest corporations through to individual consumers. In these dismal economic times, the drive towards lower cost service is relentless. The second pressure will flow from the liberalization of legal services and, in particular, from allowing non-lawyers to compete in the legal marketplace. Although this liberalization is restricted today to a small number of countries, I predict that its global impact will be profound and many other jurisdictions will follow suit before too long. The third is information technology and especially the Internet. Technology is transforming the social and economics lives of us all. I see no reason that lawyers and courts should be immune from its reach. Crucially, though, the systems that are likely to exert greatest impact are technologies. This means that they will not support, sustain, and enhance the way that lawyers and law firms have worked in the past. Instead, these technologies--such as online dispute resolution and intelligent search--will fundamentally challenge and change legal work. In combination, then, the for challenge, liberalization, and disruptive technologies are set to bring greater change in law over the next two decades than we have seen in the last two centuries. Or so I claim. Accordingly, I think it important that young people who are planning to enter our profession are exposed to some thinking about the ways in which their careers might unfold. The future of law, I say, will be neither Grisham nor Rumpole. Rather, it will be virtual courts, diagnostic expert systems, commoditization, alternative sourcing, internet-based global legal businesses, web-based simulated practice, and much more. What I try to do in the book, therefore, is to explain how and why there will be radical changes in the legal market, and what this means for law firms, for in-house counsel, for the courts and judges, and for consumers of legal services. I also try to offer practical guidance for young lawyers--on what new legal jobs there are likely to be, who will be employers of lawyers in the future, and what our law schools should be thinking and doing about the future. Although the book was conceived as an introduction to the future for tomorrow's lawyers, when I asked various clients and colleagues to read early drafts, many said that it is also a useful primer for more seasoned practitioners. In the words that follow, I discuss three topics that are central to the book and, I hope, of interested to lawyers everywhere--decomposing and alternative sourcing, liberalization, and legal education. I. Decomposing and Alternative Sourcing Over ten years ago, I came up with an idea that has gradually gained traction in the legal world--that we can look at the delivery of legal work as a form of production process, and one to which we can bring all manner of new efficiencies. Legal matters such as deals and disputes, I claim, are not indivisible professional engagements that must all be sourced and delivered in one way (conventionally by an attorney in a law firm). …

USA: Predictive Coding and the Changing Legal Marketplace

(2013). USA: Predictive Coding and the Changing Legal Marketplace. Legal Ethics: Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 380-383.

Joining the Conversation: Law Library Research Assistant Programs and Current Criticisms of Legal Education

Law libraries should play a greater role in addressing the current crisis in legal education. Proponents for educational reform often view libraries as a vehicle for cost savings, while overlooking the ability of libraries to train students in the skills and competencies that are essential for the practice of law. Libraries’ research assistant programs can be particularly effective in imparting workplace values and lawyering skills beyond the traditional law school curriculum. This article encourages libraries to build on the strengths of their research assistant programs as a substantive way to equip law students with essential skills for today's legal marketplace.

Review: Transforming the Law

A book review of 'Transforming the Law' by Richard Susskind.Published as Review: 'Transforming the Law: Essays on Technology, Justice and the Legal Marketplace' [2002] 61 CLJ 486

Legal education in Nigeria: an evaluation of the recruitment practice for the teaching of law as a career

This article makes a critical assessment of legal education in Nigeria, focusing on the standard of hiring for the teaching of law as a career in the country. Legal academics are hired based upon an accreditation standard that requires a vocational qualification determined through a call to the Nigerian Bar. The article argues that making a vocational qualification a criterion for academic appointment – apart from other achievements demonstrated through higher law degrees – inhibits innovation in teaching and learning and needs to change. This change is premised on three reasons: the growth of interdisciplinary legal scholarship; the trend in the legal marketplace; and the correlation between a law faculty and a department of religion. And it concludes with some proposals to think about for a more scholarly approach towards the teaching of law within Nigerian academia. The aim of this article is to inform the essential dichotomy between legal scholarship and practice, and the transnational aspirations of legal academics, for those involved in the development of law teaching and study, as well as those concerned with educational policy and administration around the world.

Internet legal service marketing: are Malaysian lawyers getting left behind?

Although the subject of legal marketing as an evolution of legal service has been widely discussed in countries like the USA, especially after the US Supreme Court ruling in Bates v. State Bar of Arizona in 1977, it is far from clear whether internet legal service marketing in Malaysia is currently given a similar emphasis by local lawyers to indicate new techniques for the delivery of legal services in the challenging legal marketplace. This article evaluates the limitations faced by legal practitioners especially in the area of marketing their services in Malaysia. Problems like legal constraints (with due respect, it is pointed out that maintaining the traditional techniques for the delivery of legal services is a trend in Malaysia) are identified as among the factors that led to the weak interest in online legal marketing. Finally, the article contributes suggestions on possible and flexible approaches and features for legal practitioners in exploiting marketing tools and techniques for success in their practice. We propose that despite some legal constraints on lawyers' marketing intentions, Malaysian lawyers should comprehend the importance of online legal marketing for their survival and, thus, the legal constraints should not be strictly interpreted so as not to prevent online legal marketing.

Transcending Borders: Objects on the Move

Does the demand for archaeological artefacts in the legal marketplace in Israel increase the looting of archaeological sites in the region? Through the course of investigating this question it became apparent that while consumer demand may be at the heart of the trade in antiquities, the nature and driving forces behind looting are far more complex than is often understood. The motivations for looting involve notions of nationalism, the forces of globalism, conflicting preservation and management plans, colonialism, and long-entrenched traditional practices. It is an examination of this complexity (i.e. the multiple forms of and incentives for looting), which forms the focus of this paper. This is an exploration of the multivocality of the various agents who make it possible for objects to transcend borders.

Going Global, Acting Local: Multi-Site Management in US Law Firms

Over-paid, over-worked, and over here? From a trickle of firms arriving in the UK 50 years or so ago, US law firms are now a noisy presence in the London and wider European legal marketplace. They are expected by some estimates to commandeer 10% of the UK legal market within the next couple of years. Linda Maynard examines what it is like working in such a firm, in particular, looking at multi-site law firm management from the fringes rather than the centre.

Richard Susskind, Transforming the Law: Essays on Technology, Justice and the Legal Marketplace. (Book Review)

Richard Susskind, Transforming the Law: Essays on Technology, Justice and the Legal Marketplace. (Book Review)

Legal Education in the Recruitment Marketplace: Decades of Change

The legal marketplace has undergone tremendous changes over the past three decades. Expansion of initial employment opportunities, competition among employers to hire top candidates, and decreasing likelihood of long-term affiliation between a new lawyer and his or her first employer affect not only the recruitment process, but legal education itself. This essay will first trace developments in legal recruitment from the 1960's to the present, then attempt to predict how legal recruitment will continue to develop and affect legal education as a whole.