Law Library

New ABA book offers career insights and life lessons from women lawyers


“Her Story: Lessons in Success from Lawyers Who Live It” is a powerful and uplifting compilation of personal essays about achieving success while juggling the curveballs of life and career advancement with strength and grace. The collection takes the reader along on the diverse personal journeys of women who have overcome personal challenges to forge careers befitting their own definitions of success. “Her Story” defines success not as a one-size-fits-all proposition, but rather, a myriad of individual stories of fulfilled women.

The book is divided into eight chapters with topics on developing a plan for success, gaining momentum, keeping values straight, building endurance, maintaining perspective, getting back up, and finally, going the distance. Each chapter ends with provocative questions for personal reflection or discussion in a book club, roundtable, or meeting setting.

“Her Story: Lessons in Success and Lawyers Who Live It” was edited by Teresa M. Beck, Jacqueline Mecchella Bushwack, and Shayna M. Steinfeld.

 

New ABA book ‘Broken Scales’ explores the ­concept of injustice with compelling examples
 

The scales of justice are a universally recognized symbol of modern law and project the idea of fair distribution of law, with no influence of bias, privilege or corruption.

But there is no widely recognized counterpart for acts of injustice. Still, as Joel Cohen explores in his new book, “Broken Scales: Reflections on Injustice,” injustices do happen and often are perpetrated by prosecutors, judges and manipulators of the system, with adverse consequences on the lives of celebrities as well as everyday people.

Cohen’s book, which was recently reviewed in The New York Times, provides insightful narrative, case histories and interviews with 10 people who suffered from or participated in legal system injustices. At its core, the book raises the paramount question of what is an injustice. Beyond that, Cohen tackles related questions of whether there is an injustice when the game is played fairly but the system got it wrong; when an otherwise fair jury trial convicts the wrong man; and when over-the-top passions of advocates cloud the clear-thinking of others.

Cohen, a respected white-collar criminal defense lawyer and a former prosecutor in New York, has practiced for nearly 30 years, including handling complex civil litigation, at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP. He writes regularly for the New York Law Journal, The Hill, The Huffington Post and Law.com, on criminal law, legal ethics and social policy. Contributor Dale J. Degenshein has practiced law since 1984 and has worked at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP since 2007.

“Joel Cohen has done a masterful job of synthesizing some of the reasons why the scales of justice are broken,” the New York Law Journal said in a review. “We may never see the day when public opinion, political ambition or dishonest populism will take its thumb off the scales of justice; but Joel Cohen's ‘Broken Scales’ bring us a long way toward that goal.”