Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Moonlighting Sonata: Conflicts, Disclosure And The Scholar/Consultant, Jeffrey L. Harrison, Amy R. Mashburn

UF Law Faculty Publications

Although the impact of conflicting interests is of constant concern to those in legal education and other fields, a recent scholarly article and an extensive analysis in the New York Times suggest the problem is more pressing than ever. In the context of legal scholarship the problem arises when a professor is, in effect, employed by two entities. Disclosure of possible conflicts is the most commonly proposed response. The article argues that disclosure is merely a risk shifting devise that does not fully address the issue of bias. It draws on comparisons with products liability and legal ethics to suggest …

A Guide To Legal Research In Virginia, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

The primary goal of this new edition of A Guide to Legal Research in Virginia is to expand coverage in several chapters and to add a new chapter covering legal ethics materials. This edition also notes changes in the URLs for many Virginia government websites. Most of these changes are likely based on changes in administrations and technological upgrades. The researcher should be aware that there is a lack of consistency among Virginia government web addresses. Changes in the operation and coverage of the major legal databases are noted where appropriate. Today, Virginia practitioners have a wide variety of resources, …

Redefining Roles And Duties Of The Transactional Lawyer: A Narrative Approach, Lori D. Johnson

Scholarly Works

Today’s transactional lawyers perform myriad tasks for their clients, including structuring, drafting, conceptualizing, negotiating, and executing the complex, risky, and often cutting-edge transactions their clients bring to the table. On the other side of that table, often sits another team of sophisticated transactional lawyers. These opposing counsel are armed for battle over every nuance, every word, every representation, every deliverable, and every obligation their client is poised to undertake or agree to. Therefore, modern transactional lawyers must behave as advocates and explore new modes of persuasion. As a response, scholars have begun to propose that transactional lawyers employ methods of …

Incorporating Social Justice Into The Law School Curriculum With A Hybrid Doctrinal/Writing Course, Rosa Castello

Faculty Publications

Educating future lawyers is about more than just teaching them substantive law. We are preparing professionals who will go out into our world and shape and affect it in deep and impacting ways. They will make law, enforce law, determine policy, defend people, advocate, and influence lives and businesses. Therefore, any thorough law school education should teach social justice and encourage students to become more engaged in activism.

One way to incorporate social justice into the law school curriculum is to offer specific courses focused on social justice. However, administrators may be concerned about demand for such classes or ability …

Kain V. Department Of Environmental Protection, Sarah M. Danno

Public Land & Resources Law Review

Global climate change and its chronic frustrations generated passage of the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act. The Massachusetts Legislature imposed time-bound implementation mandates on the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection with Massachusetts residents acting as compliance watchdogs. In Kain, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts interpreted the Act in favor of environmental integrity and strict agency compliance standards.

Open Letter On Ethical Norms In Intellectual Property Scholarship, Robin Feldman, Mark A. Lemley, Jonathan Masur, Arti K. Rai

Faculty Scholarship

As scholars who write in intellectual property (“IP”), we write this letter with aspirations of reaching the highest ethical norms possible for our field. In particular, we have noted an influx of large contributions from corporate and private actors who have an economic stake in ongoing policy debates in the field. Some dollars come with strings attached, such as the ability to see or approve academic work prior to publication or limitations on the release of data. IP scholars who are also engaged in practice or advocacy must struggle to keep their academic and advocacy roles separate.

Our goal is …

Assignments With Intrinsic Lessons On Professionalism (Or, Teaching Students To Act Like Adults Without Sounding Like A Parent), Beth H. Wilensky

Articles

There is little question that law schools ought to teach their students professionalism – indeed, they are required to do so to maintain accreditation. And there is little question that the required legal writing and research course is one of the places it ought to be taught. But teaching students to adopt the norms of professional behavior — both in law school and after graduation — is a challenge to law faculties, and particularly to the experiential learning faculty who frequently are on the front lines of teaching professionalism. While there are many ways to teach students what professional and …

Certificates Of Confidentiality: Protecting Human Subject Research Data In Law And Practice, Leslie E. Wolf, Mayank J. Patel, Brett A. Tarver, Jeffrey L. Austin, Lauren A. Dame, Laura M. Beskow

Faculty Publications By Year

The federal Certificate of Confidentiality plays an important role in research on sensitive topics by authorizing researchers to refuse to disclose identifiable research data in response to subpoenas in any legal setting. However, there is little known about how effective Certificates are in practice. This article draws on our legal and empirical research on this topic to fill this information gap. It includes a description of the purpose of Certificates, their legislative and regulatory history, and a summary of the few reported and unreported cases that have dealt with Certificates. In addition, we outline other statutory confidentiality protections, compare them …

Wanting To Do More But Bound To Do Less: A Law Librarian's Dilemna, Paul Mclaughlin

Law Library Faculty Scholarship

The role of the law librarian has changed from managing the contents of a library’s collection of books to knowing how to find information sources located around the world contained in a variety of formats, taking part in instruction, and participating in networking activities. Law librarians are constrained by legal and professional codes. If they are cautious, law librarians can assist, instruct, and reach out to public patrons and students while operating within the professional guidelines that govern them.

Wanting To Do More But Bound To Do Less: A Law Librarian’S Dilemma, Paul Mclaughlin

Scholarly Works

The role of the law librarian has changed from managing the contents of a library’s collection of books to knowing how to find information sources located around the world contained in a variety of formats, taking part in instruction, and participating in networking activities. Law librarians are constrained by legal and professional codes. If they are cautious, law librarians can assist, instruct, and reach out to public patrons and students while operating within the professional guidelines that govern them.

"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 …

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 …

Solving Your Ethical Conundrums: Researching The Rules Of Professional Conduct, Joyce Manna Janto

Law Faculty Publications

Ms. Janto provides a practical guide to researching issues of attorney professional responsibilities using both print and online resources, emphasizing Virginia rules and decisions.

Something Bad In Your Briefs, Richard H. Underwood

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In a profession heavily driven by writing, plagiarism is an ethical issue that plagues the legal community. The legal profession generally views plagiarism as unethical, but often sends mixed messages by condemning it in some settings, but not others. In this short Commentary, Professor Underwood discusses the ethical implications of plagiarism in legal writing.

E-Discovery 2.0, Lumen N. Mulligan, Joyce Isaacs

Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Minding The Court: Enhancing The Decision-Making Process, Pamela Casey, Kevin Burke, Steve Leben

Faculty Works

A compelling and growing body of research from the fields of cognitive psychology and neuroscience provides important insights about how we process information and make decisions. This research has great potential significance for judges, who spend much of their time making decisions of great importance to others. For most judges, this research literature is not part of their judicial education. This article reviews cutting edge research about decision making and discusses its implications for helping judges and those who work with them produce fair processes and just outcomes. It builds on a 2007 American Judges Association paper that encouraged judges …

Why Punctuation Matters: Part Three, David Spratt

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

E-Mails To Clients: Avoiding Missteps, Kristin J. Hazelwood

Law Faculty Popular Media

In this column for Kentucky Bar Association's magazine (B&B - Bench & Bar), Professor Hazelwood addresses the ethical implications of emailing with a client. Practitioners are provided a series of questions to ask before emailing a client.

The Literacy Practices Of Law Enforcement, Leslie Eames Seawright

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates police report writing at the Jackson Police Department in Northwest Arkansas. It presents three primary research questions which are addressed through qualitative methods of interview, observation, and discourse analysis.

1) In what ways does police training address report writing?

2) What audience awareness do police officers have when writing reports?

3)How do actual report audience members read and evaluate reports?

The police academy in this study fails to spend the necessary time discussing report writing. This is not rectified by the in-house training program, which pairs officers with Field Training Officers that are often reluctant or unqualified …

Legal Writing, The Remix: Plagiarism And Hip Hop Ethics, 63 Mercer L. Rev. 597 (2012), Kim D. Chanbonpin

UIC Law Open Access Faculty Scholarship

In this Article, I focus on hip hop music and culture as an access point to teach first-year law students about the academic and professional pitfalls of plagiarism. Hip hop provides a good model for comparison because most entering students are immersed in a popular culture that is saturated with allusions to hip hop. As a point of reference for incoming law students, hip hop possesses a valuable currency as it represents something real, experienced, and relatable.

Significant parallels exist between the cultures of United States legal writing and hip hop, although attempting direct analogies would be absurd. Chief among …

Plagiarism In Lawyers' Advocacy: Imposing Discipline For Conduct Prejudicial To The Administration Of Justice, Douglas E. Abrams

Faculty Publications

In a recent high-profile prosecution, the federal district court criticized defense counsel for filing a post-trial brief that copied passages from previously published material without attribution. The court followed other recent decisions that, since about 2000, have chastised lawyers for briefs marked by plagiarism. Some lawyers had copied passages from earlier judicial opinions that rest in the public domain, and some lawyers (as in the recent prosecution) had copied passages from private sources that are subject to the copyright laws. In either event, courts have labeled lawyers’ plagiarism “reprehensible,” “intolerable,” “completely unacceptable,” and “unprofessional.”

New Ways To Teach Drafting And Drafting Ethics, Lisa Penland, David I.C. Thomson, Susan Duncan, Karen J. Sneddon, Susan M. Chesler

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

As foreign as it can seem to not be in a physical classroom with bodies sitting in the chairs listening, it is a very different way of teaching but it can be very effective. If you go through this process of developing and dividing outcomes, dividing modules, and selecting the right technology, it can work. And that is kind of a scary thought to some people. Perhaps not people who have come to this section today or to this conference about What's Next, but for many of our colleagues, this is kind of a scary thought – that you might …

New Ways To Teach Drafting And Drafting Ethics, Karen J. Sneddon

Articles

Good morning. My name is Karen Sneddon. Today, Sue Chesler and I are going to showcase a technique to incorporate issues of ethics and professionalism into a drafting course. And that technique is Teaching Drafting Ethics Using Video Vignettes. Of course we know at this point that Carnegie’s Educating Lawyers, CLEA's Best Practices have reinvigorated examination of law school curricula, mostly especially with the inclusion of transactional based skills increasing the awareness of issues involving professionalism and ethics. As those transactional focused courses are being added to the curriculum, professors are striving for a way to infuse those issues of …

Colorado Legal Ethics: Guide To Resources, Robert Linz

Other Faculty Publications

Officers of the court and public figures, including attorneys and judges, are required to adhere to high ethical standards in conducting their professional duties. Courts and bar associations have a long tradition of identifying ethical norms and regulating conduct through rules and action. Although some conduct is obviously incorrect, the appropriateness of other conduct is less clear. When attorneys are unsure of the ethical nature of an action, they will need to consult sources for guidance. These sources may be fellow attorneys or bar association ethics hotline advisors.These sources also include the rules, decisions, and commentary that constitute the body …

Misunderstanding Lawyers' Ethics, Monroe H. Freedman, Abbe Smith

Michigan Law Review

The title of Daniel Markovits's book, A Modern Legal Ethics, gives the impression that it is a comprehensive treatise on contemporary lawyers' ethics. The contents of the book, however, are both more limited and more expansive than the title suggests. Markovits's treatment of lawyers' ethics concerns itself with what he conceives to be the pervasive guilty conscience of practicing lawyers over their "professional viciousness" (p. 36), and how lawyers can achieve a guilt-free professional identity "worthy of ... commitment" (p. 2). Markovits's goal in the book is to "articulat[e] a powerful and distinctively lawyerly virtue" (p. 2), one that …

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

Publications

No abstract provided.

Clarity, Organization: Watchwords For Client Correspondence, Sabrina Defabritiis

Suffolk University Law School Faculty Works

As attorneys, we strive to achieve the utmost level of clarity and organization in the legal briefs and memoranda that we file and serve. Why, then, do the fundamentals of good legal writing often fall by the wayside when drafting client correspondence? Remembering the fundamentals, as well as looking to the basic requirements of the Rules of Professional Conduct, can help in drafting organized correspondence which will serve the dual purposes of keeping the client informed and creating a record of your actions as the attorney.

Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.

Preserving Attorney-Client Privilege In The Age Of Electronic Discovery, Anthony Francis Bruno

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.