law briefs
Suffolk Law Professor David C. Yamada, a leading scholar on workplace bullying, is once again taking his research from a law review article to the legislature. His Workplace Bullying Accountability Act (Senate No. 1316), filed in the 2025–26 Massachusetts legislative session, would create a legal “duty of care” requiring employers to prevent and address abusive conduct. Employers would need to adopt anti-bullying policies, train workers on the subject, conduct good faith investigations, and, when warranted, provide remedies—or, in some cases, face liability for failing to act.
The proposal builds on Yamada’s recent University of Illinois Chicago Law Review article, “Designing Trauma-Informed Legislation: Drafting the Workplace Bullying Accountability Act,” which explains that severe bullying at work can harm health, even triggering symptoms associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. In contrast to an earlier bill drafted by Yamada, the new bill prioritizes prevention and internal resolution, allowing litigation as a last resort.
If passed, Massachusetts would become the first state to mandate these proactive steps against workplace bullying.
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Photography: Michael J. Clarke
winter 2026
Massachusetts Bill Targets Workplace Bullying
Professor David C. Yamada
In “Disconnected Connection,” forthcoming in Arkansas Law Review (2026), Professor Dyane O’Leary, JD ’05, probes a quiet crisis reshaping the legal profession: the erosion of human connection in an era of digital saturation. Drawing on interviews with law students, senior attorneys, and professional-development leaders, O’Leary argues that Slack messages and Zoom calls are often replacing the hallway chats and mentorship moments that once defined legal training. The paradox? As technology promises efficiency, it quietly dismantles the interpersonal scaffolding of lawyering itself, she writes. With generative AI poised to automate the technical, O’Leary argues that the human touch—empathy, listening, rapport—is not a soft skill but a survival skill. This is not a lament for the past, she says, but a call to recalibrate; in a profession built on trust, the future may depend not on mastering the next tool but on remembering how to talk, listen, and connect.
Professor Dyane O’Leary
The Lawyer’s New Paradox: Connection in a Disconnected Age
In “Incentivizing Diversion” (New Mexico Law Review 137, 2025), Professor Christina Miller identifies several incentives that could make defendants more likely to choose a treatment program over criminal proceedings:
- the ability to enter a diversion program while also challenging the charges,
- more time to make a decision about whether to enter such a program,
- an opportunity to stay in mental health or addiction programing after a violation (for example, missing a class or failing a drug test), rather than facing automatic termination and full criminal penalties,
- record expungement after successful program completion.
Drawing on more than a decade as a prosecutor, Miller argues that certain structural barriers make diversion feel risky, even when it’s intended as a second chance. She recommends legislative reforms to reduce those risks, clarify benefits, and preserve some protections—steps that she says could expand access and build trust.
For prosecutors and policymakers, her takeaway is clear: Thoughtful updates could improve outcomes, reduce system strain, and make diversion a more popular alternative to incarceration.
Professor Christina Miller
What Incentives Might Convince More Defendants to Choose Treatment?
When citizens sue police for violating their constitutional rights, they face daunting odds, according to Professor Emerita Karen Blum’s recent analysis: Plaintiffs have prevailed in just three of roughly 30 qualified immunity cases before the Supreme Court since 1982.
In “Qualified Immunity: Achieving a Better Balance,” in the Boston Bar Journal (Winter 2026), Blum, JD ’74, examines why the legal doctrine has become what she describes as “one of the greatest obstacles to providing relief to citizens whose constitutional rights have been violated.”
Blum’s analysis of Supreme Court and First Circuit decisions identifies what she characterizes as a troubling pattern. Rather than ruling on whether police conduct was unconstitutional, she argues, courts routinely dispose of cases by finding the law wasn’t “clearly established”—the second prong of qualified immunity’s two-part test.
The result, Blum contends, is a vicious cycle: If courts never define what violates the Constitution, the law can never become “clearly established,” leading to future grants of immunity based on that same lack of clarity.
Blum’s proposed solution? Lower courts should decide the merits question—whether police conduct actually violated the Constitution—especially when doing so would establish clearer standards for future cases.
—Compiled by Susie Fagan and Brian Glaser
Professor Karen Blum
Professor Calls Qualified Immunity an Obstacle to Constitutional Rights Relief
