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"Lawyer developing niche in student loan debts"

Excerpt:

Law school debt has become its own legal specialty.

Joshua Cohen, a 2007 graduate of Quinnipiac School of Law, has developed a Hartford law practice based entirely on helping graduates with their student loan debt.

He, of course, uses the proceeds from this practice to pay off his own school debt totaling $160,000.

“The fact that I have a practice based on student loans is ludicrous,” said Cohen, 37. “It’s a really crappy message for the generation just graduating high school.”

Click to read the rest of "Lawyer developing niche in student loan debts" (Hartford Business).

Zombies upstage a routine public health bulletin from the CDC

As a true zombie-phile, I am very pleased to see the attention the undead are getting this week. Yesterday, the servers at the Center for Disease Control were taken down by the number of people viewing a clever announcement about zombies. From "Zombies Upstage a Routine Public Health Bulletin" (New York Times):

With a straight face, the normally staid health agency had posted a primer on how to prepare for an invasion of the brain-eating undead.

“So what do you need to do before zombies ... or hurricanes or pandemics for example, actually happen?” the post said. “First of all, you should have an emergency kit in your house. This includes things like water, food, and other supplies to get you through the first couple of days before you can locate a zombie-free refugee camp.”

The idea, said David Daigle, a C.D.C. spokesman whose portfolio includes disaster response, came up as they were discussing how to make the agency’s annual “It’s Hurricane Season Again” press release a little sexier.

“One of the communicators mentioned that when we were tweeting about Japan and radiation releases, someone tweeted back asking us if it could set off a zombie attack,” Mr. Daigle said.

He took the idea to the agency’s director of preparedness, Dr. Ali S. Khan, a specialist in infectious disease and a rear admiral in the Public Health Service.

“Most other directors would have thrown me out,” Mr. Daigle said. “He said, ‘Let’s form a Zombie Task Force.’ ”

Click to read the rest.

 

 

Not a surprise: New book questions effectiveness of peace-building workshops

On a number of occasions, I have heard that conflict-resolution efforts made in other countries by some US organizations, typically non-profits, only make the situations worse, often immediately if not soon after the Americans leave. (The reasons vary but a major one seems to be lack of cultural sensitivity, skill and knowledge that does not come from a couple of workshops.)

Therefore, I was not surprised to read about the experiences of Professor Phillip L. Hammack that prompted him to write Narrative and the Politics of Identity: The Cultural Psychology of Israeli and Palestinian Youth. From "New book questions effectiveness of peace-building workshops" (University News of University of California, Santa Cruz):

He took an administrative position with Seeds of Peace, a group that brings young people [from the Middle East] to the United States for three weeks. Its slogan: "Treaties are negotiated by governments; Peace is made by people."  The theory is known in psychology as the "contact approach" and has been deeply explored by UCSC emeritus professor Tom Pettigrew. The hope is that understanding and empathy can grow from conversation, mutual awareness, and shared experiences.

"I was very optimistic," Hammack said, believing that

Eyewitness accounts and memories about the past have limitations: How well do you do on this test?

A while back, I kept sending research articles about memory to my memoir-writing friends. Eventually one wrote, "Okay, Stephanie. We understand we are writing fiction!" The imp in me said, "Hah! Mission accomplished."

Because I am intrigued by people believing their memories are like video cameras despite much evidence to the contrary, I found of interest a blog post from the British Psychological Society's Research Digest. From "Test how much you know about the reliability of memory":

Past research has established that US and Chinese judges, US law students and undergrads all have limited knowledge about the factors that affect eye witness testimony.

The findings have serious implications for the understanding of memory processes in court, especially the limitations of eye witness accounts.

Researchers compiled a short test about memory and administered it to over 800 psychologists. The average score? 63!

You may take the test too. I have included four of the question below with a link to all the questions, and the answers. How do you score?

Video and article on 4th annual Mindfulness in Education Conference

From "Exclusive: Meditation meets the classroom" (Video In Your Newspaper):

WASHINGTON -- Across the country teachers are finding that short moments of silence can help settle their hyper-connected students. They call it mindful meditation, and a growing number of educators are using a secular version of this traditionally Buddhist practice to help their students learn.

Click for read the article and view the video.

 

New edition of The Mindful Lawyer now online

From the newsletter:

Welcome to the May 2011 edition of The Mindful Lawyer, a newsletter devoted to the integration of mindfulness, neuroscience, and the practice of law.

This edition includes

• Upcoming Mindfulness Programs for Lawyers
• Recent Mindfulness Events for Lawyers
• The Mindfulness Memo  (Justice Breyer and Noticing the "I" Scream)
• The Brain Brief
• Lawyer Spotlight (Charlie Halpern)

Click to read the May's The Mindful Lawyer.

 

Science says humans look for information, it feels good, and thus the 'net is ideally designed for addictive behavior

In this very short clip, neuroscientist Dr. Jaak Panksepp (mentor to people such as Temple Grandin) explains our need, our impulse, to seek resources, including information, and how that need interacts with the Internet.

More of what he says about the brain and the internet here (Washington State Magazine).

Image credit: Washington State Magazine.

"Law schools and the law of supply and demand"

Excerpt:

If law schools were publicly traded companies and you held some in your portfolio, I would be strongly advising you to sell. Fast.

...

This isn’t about the recession or the financial crisis anymore; this is about a serious misalignment between the industry that trains new lawyers and the marketplace that employs them.

Click to read the rest of "Law schools and the law of supply and demand" (Law21).

Life after law: From practicing environmental law to teaching meditation

I knew the man who is the focus of this life-after-law post when I lived in Santa Fe, and also reconnected with him while attending October's The Mindful Lawyer 2010. Grove Burnett was an environmental lawyer and mediator, and now teaches lawyers how to meditate. Grove also presents at Upaya (where I lived when it was called Dharma Shanga, led by Zentatsu Richard Baker). I link to two of his talks below.

More about Grove from The Mindful Lawyer bios page:

Grove Burnett is co-founder and guiding teacher of the Vallecitos Mountain Ranch. He has practiced meditation for over 25 years and trained with internationally renowned meditation teacher Jack Kornfield at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center in an intensive 4-year teacher-mentoring program. In addition to teaching at Vallecitos, Burnett also teaches at the Insight Meditation Society and the Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Burnett has taught mindfulness trainings for the Yale Law School, the

As Time Goes By, It Gets Tougher to "Just Remember This"

News release (Johns Hopkins University):

It’s something we just accept: the fact that the older we get, the more difficulty we seem to have remembering things. We can leave our cars in the same parking lot each morning, but unless we park in the same space each and every day, it’s a challenge eight hours later to recall whether we left the SUV in the second or fifth row. Or, we can be introduced to new colleagues at a meeting and will have forgotten their names before the handshake is over. We shrug and nervously reassure ourselves that our brains’ “hard drives” are just too full to handle the barrage of new information that comes in daily.

According to a Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, however, the real trouble is that our aging brains are unable to process this information as “new” because the brain pathways leading to the hippocampus-the area of the brain that stores memories-become degraded over time. As a result, our brains cannot accurately “file” new information (like where we left the car that particular morning), and confusion results.

“Our research uses brain imaging techniques that investigate both the brain’s functional and structural integrity to demonstrate