Teach a Law Student to Fish: A Tutor’s Perspective on Legal Writing

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By Kathleen Tarr*

[I]n a writing center, the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction. In axiom form it goes like this: Our job is to produce better writers, not better writing.
– Stephen M. North[1]

There are common standards for tutoring practice in a writing center: share the space; let the student set the agenda; understand the assignment; give the student control; prioritize problems; get the student involved in solving the problem; get the student to write; respect and use the time; and, bring the session to a close. There is also an unwritten rule: never contradict the professor or the assignment. This latter standard is actually harder to meet than it might seem.

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Fast Track Your Mindset: Engineering Confidence and Streamlining Feedback for Full Steam Success in Legal Practice

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by Deborah L. Borman*

Students face two obstacles to success in law school and later in legal practice: reduced confidence and an inability to receive feedback. Feeling insecure and having trouble internalizing feedback are interrelated emotional responses that can derail both the legal education experience and a subsequent career in the law. Continue reading “Fast Track Your Mindset: Engineering Confidence and Streamlining Feedback for Full Steam Success in Legal Practice” →

A Rhetorical Exercise: Persuasive Word Choice*

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by Stephen E. Smith**

“The choice of appropriate and striking words has a marvellous power and an enthralling charm for the reader.”[1]

Persuasion can spring from many fonts: a sound argument, a sympathetic set of facts, even the good grooming of an oral advocate.[2] In writing a legal brief, word choice is an important persuasion tool. Through word choice, legal writers may characterize a party’s behavior, clarify a scene, or recast an interaction. For example, it is very different to describe an utterance as “offering a choice,” or “issuing an ultimatum.”

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Offering and Teaching Mindfulness in Law Schools

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By Tim Iglesias*

Mindfulness is a form of meditation in which a person focuses her attention on her breathing to anchor herself in the present moment.[1] When thoughts,feelings, or anything else attracts her attention away from the breath, she might briefly acknowledge what it was that took her attention and then, without any judgment, return her attention to her breathing.

Over the last decade, mindfulness courses have proliferated in law schools nationwide.[2] Now is an appropriate time to ask two interconnected questions: First, what are we teaching in these courses? And second, how do we attract students to these courses?

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U.S. Copyright Protection for Our World Chess Champions: A Futile Zugzwang

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By Iris Kokish*

I am standing in the “all-purpose room” of Cragmont Elementary School in Berkeley, California, lecturing beside a vertical chess board displaying the following position from Rueben Fine’s The World’s Great Chess Games.[1]

Chess board

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A Message from the Dean

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I greatly appreciate the leadership of the University of San Francisco Law Review to devote significant attention to the recent grand jury action in St. Louis County, Missouri and to police-community relations generally. Earlier today, approximately 80 students and faculty and staff, led by Professor Steve Shatz, discussed the death of Michael Brown, the criminal justice process, race, the media and potential federal civil rights law enforcement action. It is heartening to see the USF School of Law community come together from a wide variety of viewpoints, debate, agree, disagree and commit to continuing our pursuit of justice.

The recent events should be a starting point for candid conversations that reflect upon the shared values that unite us and the distance we must overcome to advance those values. Some of this discussion must take place in a historical context and it must create space for the voices of people who represent the changing demographics of cities, town and communities across the country. It should also be expressed not just in the context of the criminal justice system but in access to education, job opportunities and housing, democracy and good government and the responsibilities we all have to each other. Words must lead to actions and not fall victim to short and fading attention spans, news media cycles and election campaign seasons.

Within the School of Law and across this University, we are rich in the resources of people, education, talent and principles to ask the hard questions, respect differences and work together to solve problems. I look forward to reading the commentary, views and ideas that the University of San Francisco Law Review will elicit from among us.

Sincerely,

John Trasviña
Dean, School of Law

The Impact of Ferguson in Our Legal Community

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Although the law affects our lives daily, it is not everyday that legal decisions incite a nation. It is not everyday that legal decisions bring widespread focus onto the effectiveness of the U.S. legal system. On November 24, 2015, a St. Louis County grand jury decided not to indict Darren Wilson, a police officer whose gun took the life of eighteen-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

The public has flocked to established newspapers, radio outlets, and social media to posit whether justice was served. The USF Law Review Forum, the online component of the USF Law Review, invites members of the USF community to participate in the discussion on its online platform:

1. Take a stance by writing a “Letter to the Editor” to be published on the Forum
2. Share your thoughts on the underlying legal causes or legal implications of the Ferguson decision
3. Engage with your colleagues about current legal issues to contextualize your studies with what is transpiring now

The USF Law Review is the flagship journal for intellectual discourse, and we recognize that your voices matter. Given the timeliness of the issue, acceptable submissions will be posted in an expedited manner. Acceptable submissions can be short and can be anonymous, but they must be fashioned with the sincere intent to further legal dialogue. For submissions or additional questions, please contact Forum Editor, Pareesa Ashabi, at psashabi@usfca.edu.

Sincerely,

The Board of Editors, USF Law Review, Volume 49

Educating the Masses About Gun Trusts

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By Joseph E. Gruber Jr.*

Gun ownership is a prevalent topic discussed throughout the United States. Whether you are a stout[1] Second Amendment[2] supporter, one who believes in the necessity of gun reform,[3] or a bit of both,[4] one important, and increasingly common[5] tool for gun owners is a gun trust. Gun owners establish gun trusts as a means to avoid requirements placed on individuals transferrring certain weapons. Continue reading “Educating the Masses About Gun Trusts” →

Target, Negligence, Chips, and Chickens

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by Jesse D. Gossett*

Shopping on Black Friday. It’s almost as American as baseball and apple pie. But during the 2013 holiday season, over forty million U.S. citizens experienced what is increasingly becoming a uniquely American problem: face-to-face (“FTF”) credit card fraud.[1]

FTF credit card fraud occurs when a consumer’s credit card magnetic stripe (“magstripe”) is swiped through a merchant’s card reader.[2] The fraud occurs when someone intercepts the information somewhere along the way. In the case of Target’s December 2013 data breach, [3] the interception of credit and debit card information[4] happened using a so-called memory parsing malware at the Point of Sale (“POS”).[5] But this is not the only interception method. Nearly ten years ago, fraudsters used wireless technology to access the unencrypted network of Marshall’s, which allowed them to access at least forty-five million credit card numbers.[6] Or, the theft can be as seemingly low tech as so-called skimming where the fraudster places a secondary card reader on an ATM or gas pump, or the waiter you handed your credit card to at lunch swipes it through a device on his smart phone before giving it back to you.[7] What all of these frauds have in common is they take advantage of a serious flaw in the credit card payment processing system in the United States. Namely, our credit card system relies on forty-year-old magstripe technology.[8] Continue reading “Target, Negligence, Chips, and Chickens” →

Presenting: USF Law Review Forum, An Online Supplement to USF Law Review

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As the legal community begins to utilize digital media to engage in critical discussion, the USF Law Review has chosen to expand our reach with the creation of the USF Law Review Forum.

Our goal with the USF Law Review Forum is to provide a website that makes our traditional law review articles available in a user-friendly format while providing an avenue for timely articles and legal commentary. More importantly, we hope to provide new opportunities for both esteemed scholars and USF students to engage in legal dialogue.

We invite submissions for our Law Review Forum from students, scholars, practitioners, and professors.  Full USF Law Review Forum submission guidelines are available here.

Warm Regards,

Pareesa Ashabi
Volume 49, Forum Editor
on behalf of University of San Francisco Law Review