The National Law Journal's New York office is located in a block-sized building in the Financial District. Exit one side of the building and you spy the New York Stock Exchange. Exit the other, and there's Zuccotti Park, spiritual and, for several months, physical home of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
As you can imagine, we heard a lot of drums and chanting this year as we did our work. In fact, as I write this, demonstrators have returned for a night of protest.
The noise, obviously, has reverberated far beyond lower Manhattan. How could it not, given the country's dissatisfaction with, it seems, every major institution — the government, business, the courts and certainly the legal profession and legal academe. We're reminded of Marlon Brando's line in The Wild One, when asked what he was rebelling against: "Whadda you got?"
In that spirit, we attempt in this special issue to make sense of the past year and scope out what awaits in the future. The picture isn't always pretty, but cheer up: 2012 is an election year. — David Brown, editor in chief
VOIR DIRE
From DUI arrests to stolen necklaces and Twitter tirades, celebrites provided quite a show of legal troubles to keep lawyers busy in 2011.
THE YEAR IN QUOTES
We take a look at some of the more notable quotations about legal developments from 2011.
THE CAREERIST
Blogger Vivia Chen makes some predictions about what 2012 will hold for the legal biz: in many instances, more of the same.
SUPREME COURT
The year 2011 at the U.S. Supreme Court was the calm before — and after — the storm.
LITIGATION
Litigation over BP, Toyota and financial services loomed large in 2001, as our month-by-month coverage shows.
LAW SCHOOLS
Lots of news broke out about legal education during the past year. Unfortunately for law schools, much of it was bad.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
It was a wild ride in 2011, including passage of the America Invents Act, the sweeping new patent law.
DOJ
The Department of Justice was plagued by the botched gun-trafficking probe called Operation Fast and Furious.
AGENCIES
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau hit obstacles from the starting gate, and other regulatory developments in 2011.
THE YEAR IN PHOTOS
From the battles over the health care reform law to the Occupy protests, here are some visual reminders of the year in law.
OPINION
In 2011, practitioners weighed in on a range of issues, including prosecutorial misconduct. One commentator characterized the high court's approach to it as "head in the sand.
