On Tending to the Ethics in Legal Ethics: Two Pedagogical Experiments

• Main Author: Thomas L Shaffer
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bond University
• Series: Legal Education Review
• Online Access: http://ler.scholasticahq.com/article/6135-on-tending-to-the-ethics-in-legal-ethics-two-pedagogical-experiments.pdf

[Extract] Teaching professional responsibility is difficult. It is the only nationally required subject for all US law students, but there is no mandate as to its format, duration, or teaching methodology. Most institutions offer a survey course that is elected by large numbers of students. Many, if not most instructors in such courses, aided or guided by the growing wealth of commercially-published course texts, approach the course as encompassing: (i) a large dose of teaching the “law of lawyering” (ie a combination of the legal profession’s rules for regulating the conduct of its members, the burgeoning body of decisional law reflecting both traditional6 and emerging ways in which courts are asked to rule on the subject of lawyers’ conduct, together with other statutory, regulatory law on the subject); (ii) certain instruction about the adversary system and the structure, history, composition, and service delivery systems of the legal profession;8 and (iii) some discussion of dominant professional norms and their relationship to students’ personal values.