Law and Other Disciplines

THE BUSINESS OF LAW: CHALLENGES AND ADAPTATION IN LAW PRACTICE (Merritt, The Ohio State University)
Dramatic changes have rocked the legal market in recent years.  Outsourcing, global competition, contract lawyers, do-it-yourself websites, and telecommuting are just some of the forces affecting law practice.  Clients are pushing lawyers to lower costs, organizations find it more difficult to train lawyers, and students have trouble finding jobs.  Yet a vast number of potential clients still lack cost-effective legal assistance.  What accounts for these problems?  How will the legal profession address them? Students will read materials from law, business, sociology, and other fields.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND LAW WORKSHOP (Albiston, Berkeley)
Scholars in both sociology and law and society have long been interested in questions of mobilization and social change.  Nevertheless, there is a surprising vacuum at their intersection: sociologists interested in social movements rarely examine how legal institutions relate to the formation and activities of social movements, while law and society scholars seldom examine collective action beyond impact litigation campaigns.  This course attempts to bridge this divide by introducing students to basic concepts from the social movement literature.