Our favorite pop culture picks in 2023

“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 own it for long enough, a court could determine that they are the rightful owner—regardless of what the paperwork says. It’s a concept more popularly discussed as squatter’s rights. In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Golden speaks with the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the ancient concepts underlying modern adverse possession law; some quirky state laws; and why societies would allow land to be transferred in this way. They also discuss how the plain meaning of terms like “hostile” are changed when used in adverse possession cases, and Rawles raises a hypothetical—taken from real life—of a neighbor’s crooked fence. During Golden’s first appearance on The Modern Law Library, he explained how the lack of a written contract could be navigated by a savvy lawyer. In his new book, Golden guides attorneys and their clients through the finer points of arguing for and against adverse possession claims. He shares some of the errors he’s seen pop up in adverse possession cases, and offers advice for how to avoid common pitfalls. Modern Law Library listeners have been given a promotional discount code for Litigating Adverse Possession Cases: Pirates v. Zombies through May 10, 2024. For 20% off, go to the ABA’s online shop and enter LAPC2024 at checkout.

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 thrillers, courtroom dramas and crime novels. He even considered becoming a lawyer, before his literary career took off. In his newest release, The #1 Lawyer, James Patterson partnered with co-author Nancy Allen to tell the story of Stafford Lee Penney, a criminal defense attorney in Biloxi, Mississippi, who’s never lost a case. But after handing a high-profile murder trial involving the son of a mobster, Penney finds himself on the other side of the bench as a defendant himself, charged with murdering his own wife. Patterson has written and co-written more than 300 books, including bestselling series like Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club and Maximum Ride. He had some writing tips for attorneys, particularly on how to work collaboratively. As Patterson tells listeners in the podcast, he is open about working with other writers on many of his books, and he finds tools like outlining absolutely essential. He also shares with Rawles how he thinks co-writers should handle interpersonal communication while working together. Patterson says one of the major benefits of working with co-authors is pulling from their experiences to make his books more accurate and true to life. When he wrote The President is Missing with Bill Clinton, the former president could tell Patterson the inside details of how a Secret Service detail worked. When he wrote Run, Rose, Run with Dolly Parton, she walked him through the production cycle for a song. Allen, who conducted more than 30 jury trials as a prosecutor in Missouri and taught law for 15 years at Missouri State University, contributed her firsthand courtroom experience to The #1 Lawyer. Patterson says they worked to make everything as accurate as possible—while still allowing for a good story. It’s the pair’s second book together, following a previous standalone novel, Juror #3. In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Patterson shares some of his favorite law-related pop culture picks; news about new and ongoing projects; and describes a very special birthday event with Dolly Parton. He also discusses how his children’s series Maximum Ride got caught up in Florida book bans in 2023. For fans of Patterson’s breakout success, the Alex Cross series launched in 1993 with Along Came a Spider, the author shares updates about what’s next for the intrepid detective—including details about the upcoming Amazon Prime TV series Cross, starring Aldis Hodge.

Three high-profile cases of sexual assault in 2012 followed a basic pattern: A teenage girl was sexually assaulted at a house party by one or more teenage boys while she was incapacitated by alcohol. The attacks were recorded and the photos, videos and stories were shared on social media or via texts. The photos and videos were used to ridicule the victims among their peers. Those texts and posts later became evidence in criminal cases. These incidents took place in Steubenville, Ohio; Maryville, Missouri; and Saratoga, California, and sparked national conversations about youth, technology and sexual assault in 2013. “The question gnawing at everyone, myself included, was: What were these kids thinking?” writes Anna Gjika, a sociology professor who studies crime and gender issues. More than 10 years later, Gjika has attempted to answer that question in her new book, When Rape Goes Viral: Youth and Sexual Assault in the Digital Age. She took a close look at the three attacks in 2012, but identifies a number of similar instances that have happened more recently. One of the elements the public found shocking about the cases was how many bystanders filmed or photographed the unconscious girls or the sexual assaults as they were occurring, without intervening. In talking to people involved in the cases and to teens in general as part of her research, Gjika found that the young people did not think of their social media as archival so much as “of the moment.” They filmed and posted what was happening around themselves because they were used to doing that. “Sharing an experience has become an integral part of the experience,” Gjika writes. In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Gjika and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her research into generational attitudes towards social media and sexual assault; the promises and pitfalls of digital evidence in sexual assault cases; how social media can be empowering or degrading for survivors; the social responsibility held by the legal community and the tech industry; and what interventions could be effective to prevent such assaults from taking place. Digital evidence like cellphone videos and texts can be extremely beneficial to prosecutors looking to prove incidents of sexual assault, particularly when victims are unable to recount their experience because they were unconscious or impaired during the attacks. But Gjika explains that this kind of evidence is not uncomplicated. The way juries perceive the evidence will still be filtered through societal expectations and prejudices. Defense attorneys do not have the same access to digital evidence from tech companies, and usually lack capacity to process immense amounts of data. The expertise, willingness and resources of police departments and prosecutors’ offices to seek out this evidence also vary widely. And the victims can be further traumatized by the use in court of images and video of their assaults, and the knowledge that the images continue to be disseminated on the internet. In closing, Rawles and Gjika discuss what actions can be taken by schools, the legal community and the tech industry to prevent such attacks or to assist victims whose assaults have been digitally documented. Gjika believes educational programs and trainings for teens need to focus on peer groups and norms, rather than emphasizing individual responsibility, and “must be grounded within adolescents’ lived experiences, rather than on adult fears and anxieties.” She also argues that adults as well as teens would benefit from “ethical digital citizenship initiatives,” where concepts like privacy and online decision-making could be discussed. And she suggests the creation of government-funded organizations to assist survivors with removing digital content from the internet.

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 Legal Profession. In this episode of The Modern Law Library, Brescia tells the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles about the efforts in the late 19th and early 20th century to exclude people from the legal profession who were not part of the dominant social class, and how access-to-justice issues persist today as a result of some of those measures. The early American Bar Association is one of the organizations he names as a participant in the exclusionary efforts through its law school accreditation program, and he and Rawles discuss the ABA’s current efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion. As someone who has worked in academia, the non-profit world, legal aid organizations and as a clerk at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, he says he’s come across many people who care deeply and want the justice system to function better. But without fundamental changes to the ways legal services are delivered, he does not think the access-to-justice issues can be solved. A large part of Brescia’s concern that he expresses in Lawyer Nation is for legal professionals themselves. Brescia says the mental illness and substance-use levels within the profession demonstrate that greater care has to be shown for lawyers’ well-being and work-life balance. He shares his advice for making the profession more sustainable for the incoming generation. He also discusses how law schools and legal education can change.

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 from a more informal collection of pugilists clad in wool coats to what we can recognize today as a modern professionalized police department.” From the beginning, race and ethnicity had a major impact in the policing of New York City. In a city where the top echelons of power were held by Anglo-Dutch Protestants, the streets were patrolled by Irish and German immigrant police officers, sometimes enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act by snatching Black people off the streets and sending them back to enslavement in the South. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Guariglia and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss what the early period of policing in New York City can tell us about policing today. Rawles shares her own ancestor’s path from immigrant to police court judge on the West Side of Chicago (though the dates she cites in the interview are incorrect–Michael J. O’Donoghue emigrated from Ireland in the 1874 and was appointed to the police court in 1901.) For Irish and German immigrants, a job on the police force was a path out of poverty and towards whiteness and political power, but you would be asked to prove yourself by visiting violence on your own community. African American community leaders hoped the appointment of Black policemen would curb police brutality, but the city was slower than other metropolises like Chicago, who hired James L. Shelton as the city’s first Black officer in 1871. Samuel Battle became the NYPD’s first Black police officer in 1911, eventually rising to the rank of lieutenant and being appointed a parole commissioner. Meanwhile, in neighborhoods like Chinatown, entire communities went without police officers who spoke the same language as inhabitants. The first Chinese-speaking officer was hired in 1904. That same year, the General Slocum disaster sent the city administration scrambling for German-speaking police officers to locate relatives in Kleindeutschland to identify bodies of the thousand victims of the burned shipwreck. Fears of “the Black Hand” led to the creation of the Italian Squad, and Guariglia shares the story of how the Italian Squad’s founder, Joseph Petrosino, ended up assassinated while on assignment in Sicily. “Empire City” is an apt name for New York City, as it had international reach and drew on former colonial administrators. One influential police commissioner, Gen. Francis Vinton Greene, had been involved in the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. Tactics first used to subjugate colonists were put to use in the city. As the Progressive Era led to a preoccupation with eugenics, the New York City police were involved in international conversations about the characteristics of criminals and race science. The idea of molding the perfect police officers also caught hold. In this episode, Guariglia shares how the police departments decided they had to teach their officers how to stand and chew properly.

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 Voting Rights Act of 1965. As a young lawyer in the late 1960s, Fiss worked with the Department of Justice to implement those laws. A classroom discussion in the spring of 2020 prompted him to draw upon his legal expertise and decades of experience to produce his new book, Why We Vote. In this episode of The Modern Law Library podcast, Fiss speaks with the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles about the paradox of the court system–the least democratic branch of government–having the responsibility of safeguarding the right to vote. He looks back on his work with the DOJ in southern states, and his time as a clerk for Justice Thurgood Marshall (then on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York) and Justice William Brennan.  Rawles and Fiss also discuss recent threats to the electoral system and right to vote, including the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Fiss shares his thoughts about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and whether former President Donald Trump should be removed from the ballot on that basis. While every book he writes is for his students, Fiss says, he hopes Why We Vote can impress upon a broader audience the privilege and duty of voting and participating in a democracy.

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 2024, she’s taking a look back at more than a decade of research and experimental programs aimed at improving access to justice–the successes and the failures. On this episode of the Modern Law Library, Jefferson and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss her new book, Law Democratized: A Blueprint for Solving the Justice Crisis. The scale of the issue is daunting: Jefferson cites a study finding that 87% of American households facing legal issues don’t even attempt to seek legal assistance. “Civil legal disputes—think child support, citizenship, consumer complaints, custody, divorce, employment, guardianship, housing, medical needs—make their way to more than fifteen thousand courts throughout the United States each year,” Jefferson writes. “Whatever the root cause, a massive delivery problem clearly exists for personal legal services.” Jefferson shares examples of alternative business structures and access-to-justice projects from around the world that challenged old client models. Some–like offering legal services inside British grocery stores–were not successes. “In theory, consumers could pick up a will with a loaf of bread or a gallon of milk, allowing them to resolve legal problems in a place they already regularly transact,” Jefferson writes. “But grocery store law never flourished.” Other ventures fared better, and Law Democratized compiles a number of suggestions based on research findings and real-world experiences. Jefferson says she intends the book to not only be a record of what’s been tried, but to also serve as a user-friendly way for the public to learn about changes they could be advocating for at local, state and national levels. Much of the discussion around improving access to justice involves regulatory reform, and Jefferson shares what has been discovered in states like Utah and Texas through the establishment of regulatory sandboxes. Jefferson also shares ideas about how law schools can be serving their communities as well as their students. Law Democratized suggests ways antitrust law and the First Amendment could be used to expand the public’s access to civil legal services without the direct use of lawyers. Jefferson and Rawles also discuss her expertise in legal ethics, and what she thinks about the use of artificial intelligence by legal professionals. Jefferson, who writes the Legal Ethics Roundup newsletter on Substack, explains why she doesn’t see the need for an immediate rewriting of the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct to address the new technology.

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, Kevin McGoff has advice on planning that next chapter. In his book, Finding Your Landing Zone: Life Beyond the Bar, McGoff describes his dawning realization that he was missing out on experiences while his life was dominated by his legal practice. He approached his law firm management team with a proposal to gradually decrease his hours and hand off his client work to younger successors. A big believer in purposeful planning, McGoff offers a series of worksheets to help readers kickstart their own plans for what a life after the practice of law might look like. For McGoff, one of the big dreams of his life—which began while he was stationed in Europe with the U.S. Army—was to spend more time traveling, and to one day live in France. He studied French and even sponsored a club at his children’s school to promote the French language. He and his wife, Patty, loved their trips to France. So when they discussed what the next chapter of their lives would look like, they decided to finally make it happen. A major goal for McGoff in writing Finding Your Landing Zone is to help readers identify what their own equivalent dream would be, and how to find their own France. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, McGoff and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss his motivation to write the book, his advice for planning a financial future, the importance of mentoring younger attorneys, and how he and Patty finally made their dream of living in France happen. He shares tips on building a succession plan and getting your firm on board, and how to actually (mostly) cut down on your hours.

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 joined by three ABA Journal reporters: Julianne Hill, Amanda Robert and the Journal's newest employee, Anna Stolley Persky. Naturally, the four discuss their favorite books, but they also have movies, TV shows, podcasts and even a play to recommend. From documentaries to audiobooks, listeners will find ways to occupy the holiday season and the new year. For the full list of recommendations, go to ABAJournal.com/2023picks.

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 and TV shows, based both in fiction and non-fiction. But after the incredible success experienced by the podcast Serial in 2014 and the documentary series Making a Murderer in 2015, a new wave of popular media exploring real cases of potential wrongful convictions burst upon the scene. While Diana Rickard didn’t consider herself a “podcast person,” her interest as an academic was piqued. The criminology professor began listening to Serial, and became fascinated by what she saw as a new expression of the true crime genre, dubbing it the “New True.” “These series deserve our attention for what they reveal about our societal understanding of crime and punishment,” Rickard writes in her book The New True Crime: How the Rise of Serialized Storytelling Is Transforming Innocence. “Through them, audiences are receiving ideological messages about punishment. They are also sites where inequality, power and racism are openly examined, playing a role in our public conversations about who is and is not deserving of punishment and who is and is not protected by law. In addition, by using the term ‘New True,’ I am also suggesting these series indicate a new way of constructing truth itself. Questioning the finality of verdicts, framing facts as in the eye of the beholder, the new series unmoor our faith in what is knowable.” In this episode of the Modern Law Library, Rickard explains how she sees the New True podcasts and documentary series as differing from older media. She and the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discuss the differences between crime reporting and this serialized storytelling, and whether the New True series are managing to avoid some of the ethical pitfalls of traditional crime reporting. They also delve into whether debunking things like flawed forensic science or false confessions for the general public may have shifted the way people think about wrongful convictions. Rickard shares what she has heard from legal experts in the innocence community about the benefits—and drawbacks—of cases catching the eyes of New True producers. She also reveals what surprised her most when she researched the Reddit communities that gather to discuss New True cases.