Since World War II, more than two million service members have been discharged from U.S. military service with a status other than "honorable discharge." Having a discharge that falls below a certain level can impact a veteran's access to pensions, GI Bill education benefits, health care, insurance or home loans, as well as carrying a stigma.
But when a veteran's circumstances are given another look, there may have been mitigating factors that weren't considered at the time of their discharge. As we've gained more understanding of conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction, it's become clear that some behaviors once seen as prompted by malice or poor character might instead have been a symptom of mental illness or a rational response to trauma like military sexual assault. A discharge status could also have been given as an act of retaliation, or because of bias and discrimination.
There can be a possible remedy: requesting a military discharge upgrade. For the first time in 30 years, there is a new manual to help guide veterans and their legal counsel through the process of requesting an upgrade, giving a fully updated look at a process that can be challenging to navigate. In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal's Lee Rawles speaks with Dana Montalto, one of the authors of the Military Discharge Upgrade Legal Practice Manual and an attorney and instructor with the Veterans Legal Clinic at Harvard Law's Legal Services Center.
Getting a discharge upgrade can be life-changing for a veteran, and the work can be done by a pro bono attorney, says Montalto. It's not an area of the law that features in law school classes, which is one of the reasons there was a push to create this new resource. In this episode, Montalto shares how she became involved in veterans legal services, answers some common questions lawyers have when considering pro bono work in this area, and talks about the many people and organizations who took part in the yearslong process of creating this resource.

Want to change a veteran's life through pro bono? There's a manual for that

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“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.

Users keepers: Pirates, zombies and adverse possession

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.

James Patterson dishes on his new legal thriller, ‘The #1 Lawyer’

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.

'When Rape Goes Viral' looks at why cases like Steubenville happen

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.

NY law prof is calling on ‘Lawyer Nation’ to reform

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.

Want to change a veteran's life through pro bono? There's a manual for that

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