Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

"Teaching" Formation Of Professional Identity, David I.C. Thomson

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This Article is my attempt to provide a guide to what professional identity formation is—as distinct from more familiar concepts of professionalism and ethics—and what legal educators are doing, and could do in the future, to foster this sort of professional formation in their courses and curricula. In Part I, I offer some background and history of the topic, which supports a new definition provided in the Article for lawyer professional identity formation. I describe in Part II what some schools are doing to “teach” formation of professional identity and argue that those efforts have some significant limitations. I argue …

William Pincus: A Life In Service – Government, Philanthropy And Legal Education, J.P. "Sandy" Ogilvy

Scholarly Articles

This article memorializes the life and accomplishments of William “Bill” Pincus. The article brings the reader through Mr. Pincus’s career accomplishments, from his humble beginnings in New York City, to his impressive career in civil service, culminating in his work with the Ford Foundation and the Council on Legal Education for Professional Responsibility (CLEPR), where he spearheaded reforms in legal education. Mr. Pincus’s efforts were critical in establishing clinical legal education, drawing from his experiences both in law and government. Much of this article is derived from interviews of Mr. Pincus, conducted by the author, and provides an unprecedented insight …

Addressing Barriers To Cultural Sensibility Learning: Lessons From Social Cognition Theory, Andrea A. Curcio

Faculty Publications By Year

Understanding subconscious biases, their pervasiveness, and their impact on perceptions, interactions, and analyses, helps prepare lawyers to represent people from cultural and racial backgrounds different from their own, and to address both individual and institutional injustice. Two law student surveys suggest many students believe lawyers are less susceptible than clients to having, or acting upon, stereotypes or biases. The survey results also indicate that many students suffer from bias blind spot – i.e. they believe that while others cannot recognize when they are acting based upon stereotypical beliefs and biases, the students know when they are doing so. The survey …

Taking Teaching And Learning Seriously: A Tribute To Professor Susan Martyn, Irma S. Russell

Faculty Works

Professor Susan Martyn is an inspiring and dedicated teacher. She inspires me by her teaching, her work with students in the classroom, as well as with lawyers in continuing legal education programs, and her writing for scholars and the public. The invitation to write in a law review edition honoring this amazing professor and scholar provided the opportunity to contemplate a topic that is central to my life and the lives of most who teach: What is good teaching, and how do we increase good teaching and good learning in legal education today? We are in a time of stunning …

Tilting At Stratification: Against A Divide In Legal Education, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Critics suggest we divide law schools into an elite tier whose graduates serve global business clients and a lower tier, which would prepare lawyers for simple disputes. This idea is not new. A similar proposal emerged in the early twentieth century. This article draws on the historical debate to argue that this simplistic approach cannot solve the myriad problems facing the legal profession and legal education. Supporters of separate tiers of law school rely on a caricature of the early history to argue that the Bar is acting in a protectionist way to ensure its own monopoly and keep newcomers …

Mindful Ethics And The Cultivation Of Concentration, Scott L. Rogers, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.

Redefining Professionalism, Rebecca Roiphe

Articles & Chapters

Most scholars condemn professionalism as self-serving, anti-competitive rhetoric. This Article argues that professionalism can be a positive and productive way of thinking about lawyers’ work. While it is undoubtedly true that the Bar has used the ideology of the professional role to support self-interested and bigoted causes, professionalism has also served as an important way of developing and marshalling group identity to promote useful ends. The critics of professionalism tend to view it as an ideology, according to which professionals, unlike businessmen, are concerned not with their own financial gain but with the good of their clients and the community …

Conceptualizing Student Practice For The 21st Century: Educational And Ethical Considerations In Modernizing The District Of Columbia Student Practice Rules, Wallace J. Mlyniec, Haley D. Etchison

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article traces the history of the amendment process. It provides a short history of student practice rules and then, using the student practice rule in effect in the District of Columbia prior to the 2014 amendments, describes the various components of those rules that courts and bars across the nation have implemented to assist courts, advance legal education, and preserve advocates’ ethical obligations to clients. It then describes some of the comments to the proposed amendments offered by the District of Columbia Bar and other D.C. lawyers during the public comment period and the modifications to the District of …

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) …

Fostering A Respect For Our Students, Our Specialty, And The Legal Profession: Introducing Ethics And Professionalism Into The Legal Writing Curriculum, Melissa H. Weresh

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Technology And Client Communications: Preparing Law Students And New Lawyers To Make Choices That Comply With The Ethical Duties Of Confidentiality, Competence, And Communication, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

That the use of technology has radically changed the legal profession is beyond dispute. Through technology, lawyers can now represent clients in faraway states and countries, and they can represent even local clients through a “virtual law office.” Gone are the times in which the lawyer’s choices for communicating with clients primarily involve preparing formal business letters to convey advice, holding in-person client meetings in the office, or conducting telephone calls with clients on landlines from the confines of the lawyer’s office. Not only do lawyers have choices about how to communicate with their clients, but they also frequently choose …

The Role Of Mindfulness In The Ongoing Evolution Of Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Professional Identity & Creating Community: A Tale Of Two Innovations, Jan L. Jacobowitz

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Emotionally Intelligent Law Professor: A Lesson From The Breakfast Club, Heidi K. Brown

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Many Connections Between Well-Being And Professionalism In The Practice Of Law: Implications For Teaching, Todd David Peterson

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

Think Like A (Mindful) Lawyer: Incorporating Mindfulness, Professional Identity, And Emotional Intelligence Into The First Year Law Curriculum, Nathalie Martin

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

On Engagement: Learning To Pay Attention, R. Lisle Baker, Daniel P. Brown

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The First Thing We Do, Jorge R. Roig

Scholarly Works

There is currently a concerted effort to dumb down America. In the midst of this, the American Bar Association’s Council of the Section on Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar recently agreed to propose that tenure for law professors be eliminated as a requirement for accreditation of law schools. This article analyzes the arguments for and against tenure in legal academia, and concludes that the main proposed justifications for eliminating tenure are highly questionable, at best. A lawyer is more than a legal technocrat. Lawyers are policy makers and public defenders. They are prosecutors and activists. And the development …

Mindful Ethics - A Pedagogical And Practical Approach To Teaching Legal Ethics, Developing Professional Identity, And Encouraging Civility, Jan L. Jacobowitz, Scott L. Rogers

Articles

Aristotle spoke of virtue and ethics as a combination of practical wisdom and habituation-an individual must learn from the application of critical reasoning skills to experience. Perhaps one of the earliest proclamations of the value of experiential learning, the Aristotelian view, reappears throughout history and is captured once again by the Carnegie Foundation's Report on Legal Education, which includes a call for instruction that provides practical skills and ethical grounding to complement the teaching of legal analysis. The Carnegie Report continues to play a role in the ongoing discussion of the need to reform legal education; a debate that is …

The Role Of Mindfulness In The Ongoing Evolution Of Legal Education, Scott L. Rogers

Articles

No abstract provided.

Cultivating Professional Identity & Creating Community: A Tale Of Two Innovations, Jan L. Jacobowitz

Articles

No abstract provided.

What It Means To Be A Lawyer In These Uncertain Times: Some Thoughts On Ethical Participation In The Legal Education Industry, Susan Carle

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Discusses legal employment and salary and how legal education can address the current market.

Law Firm Internships And The Making Of Future Lawyers: An Empirical Study In Singapore, Seow Hon Tan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This article examines the findings of an empirical study of law students from the Singapore Management University on their internship experiences at private law firms. As internships are frequently undertaken by law students, it is necessary for stakeholders to understand their impact on the values and ideals of law students in relation to the law and legal practice. This article seeks to increase the consciousness of law school educators, lawyers, and the professional bar about how law firm internships are contributing to the making of future lawyers, so as to facilitate the reflection by these parties as to their roles …

Process, Practice, And Principle: Teaching National Security Law And The Knowledge That Matters Most, James E. Baker

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The meaningful application of national security law requires a commitment to substantive knowledge, good process, and a capacity to cope (and indeed thrive) under the prevailing conditions of practice. This paper describes how and why to teach these three essential elements of national security law from an academic and practitioner perspective.

The paper starts with substantive law, placing emphasis not just on the breadth of knowledge and interpretive skills required, but also on the importance of depth, perspective, theory, purpose, history, and legal values in teaching the law. Next, the paper describes the importance of timely, meaningful, and contextual process, …

Are Clinics A Magic Bullet?, Deborah J. Cantrell

Publications

In the current conversation about reforming legal education, one of the constant refrains is that law schools must graduate students who are "practice ready." Commentators go on to argue that for law schools to produce "practice ready" students, they must expand how they offer experiential learning. One potential way to do that is to expand clinical legal education programs. I worry that law schools (and others) are envisioning clinical legal education as a magic bullet that will solve all of the ills and imbalances present in current legal education. In this article, I demonstrate the unhelpfulness of the phrase "practice …

Is It Time For Real Reform: Nysba's 20 Years Of Examining The Bar Exam, Mary A. Lynch, Kim Diana Connolly

Other Scholarship

No abstract provided.

“Harmonizing Current Threats: Using The Outcry For Legal Education Reforms To Take Another Look At Civil Gideon And What It Means To Be An American Lawyer”, Cathryn A. Miller-Wilson

Working Paper Series

Drawing from the broad and varied literature on legal ethics, the paper demonstrates that legal education and access to justice concerns can and should be addressed simultaneously in our current political and economic climate. Current threats to legal education, and to lawyering in general, present an opportunity for legal education transformation. Applying legal ethics theory to an analysis of these threats provides support for the creation of teaching law firms, similar in size and scope to teaching hospitals, that will employ clinical teaching methodology, substantially enhance ethics teaching and significantly address the issue of access to justice.

Legal Education: Rethinking The Problem, Reimagining The Reforms, Deborah L. Rhode

Pepperdine Law Review

Whether or not law schools are in a crisis, it is certainly true that legal education currently faces a number of significant challenges. The fundamental problem is a lack of consensus over what the problem is. Legal educators and regulators are developing well-intended but inadequate responses to the symptoms, not the causes of law school woes. In addition to identifying the problem, this Article discusses potential reforms. Financial issues represent a significant source of much of the current criticisms face by law schools today. Tuition rates have increased at a pace far outstripping the steep hikes seen at universities as …

The Lawyer Of The Future, Deanell Reece Tacha

Pepperdine Law Review

This piece introduces the Pepperdine Law Review symposium issue for Volume 40, publishing articles derived from the April 20, 2012 The Lawyer of the Future: Exploring the Impact of Past and Present Lawyers and the Lessons They Provide for Future Generations symposium, which explored the role of the lawyer in American society-past, present, and future.

People V. Perez - Misapplication Of The Right To Counsel, William A. Roberts, Greg F. Janson

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.