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Legal ethics

Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

University of Colorado Law School

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Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang Jan 2019

Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Mindfulness involves paying attention with curiosity in an intentional, open, and compassionate way to life as it unfolds moment to moment. Law students, lawyers, law professors, legal clients, and indeed all people can improve their lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness can lead to individual benefits and personal transformation. Mindfulness can also lead to societal benefits and social change. This invited symposium contribution exemplifies how mindfulness can facilitate the positive personal and professional development of law students by presenting excerpts of law students' answers discussing mindfulness to questions from the final examination of the course: Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Notably, none of …


Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang Jan 2019

Mindfulness In Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Mindfulness involves paying attention with curiosity in an intentional, open, and compassionate way to life as it unfolds moment to moment. Law students, lawyers, law professors, legal clients, and indeed all people can improve their lives through mindfulness. Mindfulness can lead to individual benefits and personal transformation. Mindfulness can also lead to societal benefits and social change. This invited symposium contribution exemplifies how mindfulness can facilitate the positive personal and professional development of law students by presenting excerpts of law students’ answers discussing mindfulness to questions from the final examination of the course: Legal Ethics and Professionalism. Notably, none of …


Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, And Leadership?, Peter H. Huang Jan 2017

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, And Leadership?, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction, defines mindfulness as paying attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Psychologist Ellen Langer defines mindfulness as a flexible state of mind actively engaging in the present, noticing new things, and being sensitive to context. Langer differentiates mindfulness from mindlessness, which she defines as acting based upon past behavior instead of the present and being stuck in a fixed, solitary perspective, oblivious to alternative multiple viewpoints. Something called mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for some time now in American …


Love, Anger, And Lawyering, Deborah J. Cantrell Jan 2016

Love, Anger, And Lawyering, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

This essay explores how mindfulness practices helped one lawyer, now legal scholar, explore the roles of love and anger in lawyering.


Practicing Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell, Kenneth Sharpe Jan 2016

Practicing Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell, Kenneth Sharpe

Publications

Wisdom is not an innate character trait; no one automatically is wise; wisdom is learned and acquired. More importantly, one can learn and acquire wisdom intentionally and skillfully — one can practice it. And, if the practice is structured in particular ways, the practice will improve one’s capacities to act with wisdom. This article clarifies theoretical muddiness and pedagogical imprecision by bringing together two important and robust strands of legal ethics literature. The first strand focuses on what the appropriate role of a lawyer is in a just society, while the second focuses on how a lawyer learns to be, …


How Improving Decision-Making And Mindfulness Can Improve Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang Jan 2015

How Improving Decision-Making And Mindfulness Can Improve Legal Ethics And Professionalism, Peter H. Huang

Publications

Lawyers who behave unethically and unprofessionally do so for various reasons, ranging from intention to carelessness. Lawyer misconduct can also result from decision-making flaws. Psychologist Chip Heath and his brother Dan Heath, in their best-selling book, Decisive: How to Make Better Decisions in Life and Work, suggest a process to improve people’s decision-making. They introduce the acronym WRAP as the mnemonic for these decision-making heuristics: (1) Widen your options, (2) Reality-test your assumptions, (3) Attain distance before deciding, and (4) Prepare to be wrong. The WRAP process mitigates these cognitive biases: (1) narrow framing of a decision problem, (2) …


Lawyering For Groups: The Case Of American Indian Tribal Attorneys, Kristen A. Carpenter, Eli Wald Jan 2013

Lawyering For Groups: The Case Of American Indian Tribal Attorneys, Kristen A. Carpenter, Eli Wald

Publications

Lawyering for groups, broadly defined as the legal representation of a client who is not an individual, is a significant and booming phenomenon. Encompassing the representation of governments, corporations, institutions, peoples, classes, communities, and causes, lawyering for groups is what many, if not most, lawyers do. And yet, the dominant theory of law practice--the Standard Conception, with its principles of zealous advocacy, nonaccountability, and professional role-based morality--and the rules of professional conduct that codify it, continue to be premised on the basic antiquated assumption that the paradigmatic client-attorney relationship is between an individual client and an individual attorney. The result …


Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert M. Linz Jan 2010

Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert M. Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.


The Ethics Of Collaborative Law, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2008

The Ethics Of Collaborative Law, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

The practice of Collaborative Law - in which both parties agree that should their case fail to settle, both lawyers will be disqualified from proceeding to court - has grown rapidly in the family bar over the last decade. At the same time, the ethics of this practice have been called into question. Competing ethics opinions in 2007 - from the Colorado Bar Association and the American Bar Association - alternately ban and permit the practice. This Article tries to clarify the underlying ethical issues in Collaborative Law, arguing that much confusion has resulted from imprecise understandings of what the …


The (New) Ethics Of Collaborative Law, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2008

The (New) Ethics Of Collaborative Law, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

No abstract provided.


Colorado Ethics Opinion 115: Next Steps For Colorado's Collaborative Lawyers, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2007

Colorado Ethics Opinion 115: Next Steps For Colorado's Collaborative Lawyers, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

No abstract provided.


Sensational Reports: The Ethical Duty Of Cause Lawyers To Be Competent In Public Advocacy, Deborah J. Cantrell Jan 2007

Sensational Reports: The Ethical Duty Of Cause Lawyers To Be Competent In Public Advocacy, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

This article argues that cause lawyers - those lawyers whose primary focus is on social change rather than on for-profit client-based work - have an ethical responsibility to be competent in public advocacy. That responsibility stems from a cause lawyer's commitment to the principles embodied in the particular social movement in which the lawyer is acting. It is reinforced by the requirement of competency under the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. To illustrate the contours of a competent public advocacy strategy, the article highlights two cause lawyering organizations, Legal Momentum and the Institute for Justice, and considers how each organization …


Tortured Legal Ethics: The Role Of The Government Advisor In The War On Terror, Jessica Radack Jan 2006

Tortured Legal Ethics: The Role Of The Government Advisor In The War On Terror, Jessica Radack

University of Colorado Law Review

The so-called "torture memos" beg for a re-examination of government lawyers' ethical obligations, especially when acting as advisors, not advocates. This article explores the two major models of government lawyers' ethics: the "agency" approach, which stresses the duties of loyalty, zeal and confidentiality and disfavors attorney interference with client goals, and the "public interest" approach, which places greater weight on fairness and justice, and wants lawyers to weigh in on the wisdom and morality of what their clients are considering. This article argues that an Eighth Amendment analysis should be employed to determine what constitutes a "morally perilous question. " …


Lawyers' Bargaining Ethics, Contract, And Collaboration: The End Of The Legal Profession And The Beginning Of Professional Pluralism, Scott R. Peppet Jan 2005

Lawyers' Bargaining Ethics, Contract, And Collaboration: The End Of The Legal Profession And The Beginning Of Professional Pluralism, Scott R. Peppet

Publications

This Article combines contractarian economics and traditional ethical theory to argue for a radical revision of the legal profession's codes of ethics. That revision would end the legal profession as we know it-one profession, regulated by one set of ethical rules that apply to all lawyers regardless of circumstance. It would replace the existing uniform conception of the lawyer's role with a more heterogeneous profession in which lawyers and clients could contractually choose the ethical obligations under which they wanted to operate. This "contract model" of legal ethics, in which lawyers could opt in and out of various ethical constraints, …


Teaching Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell Jan 2004

Teaching Practical Wisdom, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

No abstract provided.


Jurisprudence Noire, Pierre Schlag Jan 2001

Jurisprudence Noire, Pierre Schlag

Publications

No abstract provided.


Avoiding Error In Closing Argument, H. Patrick Furman Jan 1995

Avoiding Error In Closing Argument, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.


The Thomas Hearings: Watching Ourselves, Robert F. Nagel Jan 1992

The Thomas Hearings: Watching Ourselves, Robert F. Nagel

Publications

No abstract provided.


Punishing Ethical Violations: Aggravating And Mitigating Factors, H. Patrick Furman Jan 1991

Punishing Ethical Violations: Aggravating And Mitigating Factors, H. Patrick Furman

Publications

No abstract provided.


Risks Of Violation Of Rules Of Professional Responsibility By Reason Of The Increased Disparity Among The States, Ted J. Fiflis Jan 1990

Risks Of Violation Of Rules Of Professional Responsibility By Reason Of The Increased Disparity Among The States, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

No abstract provided.


Choice Of Federal Or State Law For Attorneys' Professional Responsibility In Securities Matters, Ted J. Fiflis Jan 1981

Choice Of Federal Or State Law For Attorneys' Professional Responsibility In Securities Matters, Ted J. Fiflis

Publications

Professional standards of duty are implicated in the federal securities laws in two types of cases: those instituted by the SEC to impose sanctions for lack of character or unethical conduct and those brought by the SEC or private parties for violations of substantive provisions of the securities laws. The question faced by Professor Fiflis is whether state or federal standards should define the duties imposed under these laws. He argues that the proper method of resolving this question is to apply an interest analysis. Analyzing the various state and federal interests leads Professor Fiflis to the conclusion that federal …


Judge Frankel And The Adversary System, William T. Pizzi Jan 1981

Judge Frankel And The Adversary System, William T. Pizzi

Publications

No abstract provided.