Legal Education Commons^™

Rebellious Lawyering, Regnant Lawyering, And Street-Level Bureaucracy, Paul R. Tremblay

Paul R. Tremblay

This Article explores the professional responsibilities of progressive lawyers representing the poor and disadvantaged. The author argues that lawyers representing the poor are generally good, energetic lawyers committed to social justice and lessening the pain of poverty. Subsequently, the defects found in poverty lawyering are structural, institutional, political, economic, and ethical. Therefore, the author posits that the mission of teachers and practitioners should be to develop practice patterns and proposals that account for the street-level experiences of legal services lawyers on the front lines. By examining the notions of rebellious and regnant lawyering, the author seeks to illuminate how these …

Professional Responsibility In An Uncertain Profession: Legal Ethics In China, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Judith A. McMorrow

The rapidly expanding Chinese legal profession provides an extraordinary opportunity for the U.S. legal profession to test U.S. assumptions about legal ethics. This essay examines challenges facing Chinese legal education and the Chinese legal profession as it develops norms of legal ethics. This essay examines this process from the law school and law student’s perspective about legal ethics, and then briefly explores the effort to create norms of attorney conduct from a top-down perspective. Both a bottom-up and top-down view show the tremendous challenges facing the emerging Chinese legal culture in building a coherent model of lawyering that can serve …

Professionalism: The Deep Theory, Daniel R. Coquillette

Daniel R. Coquillette

Can our personal ethics and our professional ethics be in opposition? Our professional identity as lawyers is at the center of our personal morality. The legal profession is in crisis because we have lost sight of the deep theory of professionalism. This article focuses on our ultimate motivation for obeying rules, concentrating on three common categories: goal-based, rights-based, and duty-based theories. By examining these theories, the article argues that lawyers must turn away from the modern trend of goal instrumentalism and refocus legal practice on its humanistic roots.

Professionalism Videos, Mary Ann Robinson, Alison Kehner

Mary Ann Robinson

A series of short filmed vignettes to be used to teach law students about concepts of professionalism. They are intended to be used to help our students realize that their careers as lawyers commence in law school, and that they must begin to adopt and emulate standards of professionalism in law school that they will carry with them when they become legal professionals. Choices made now not only impact their professional reputations, but also establish patterns that can serve them for the better or for the worse in practice.

A Survey Of Professional Responsibility Courses At American Law Schools In 2009, Laurel S. Terry, Andrew Perlman, Margaret Raymond

Laurel S. Terry

Teaching Professional Responsibility And Ethics, Ronald D. Rotunda

Ronald D. Rotunda

This article discusses the development of teaching legal ethics in light of the changes in the ethics rules over the years. The thesis is that many ethics rules reflect the needs of a cartel (the legal profession) to protect itself, rather than the need to protect the clients of lawyers. The author uses stories and examples to illustrate this thesis.