Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility Commons^™

Designing Interdisciplinary, Early Intervention Dispute Resolution Tools To Decrease Evictions And Increase Housing Stability, Christine N. Cimini

Articles

This Article provides a unique glimpse into the development of an early-intervention, pre-court, interdisciplinary dispute resolution project intended to decrease evictions and increase housing stability for recipients of subsidized housing in Seattle. With a grant from the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA), a coalition of non-profit organizations had the rare opportunity to design a dispute resolution system into existence. A dispute system design team was formed and began by examining the interconnected problems of housing instability, eviction, and houselessness. Despite thorough research on dispute system design and extensive meetings with stakeholders, the deign team encountered numerous challenges. This Article identifies the …

The Incorporation Of Government Lawyering In The Teaching Of Legal Ethics In Canadian Law Schools, Andrew Martin, Leslie Walden

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

Government lawyers, and the specific legal ethics issues that arise in their practices, remain largely overlooked in Canadian legal education. The authors argue that government lawyering should be better incorporated into legal ethics curricula in law schools, for both practical and conceptual reasons. Most importantly, understanding issues unique to government lawyering helps students better understand core concepts in legal ethics, and thus better prepare for the practice of law both in the public and private sectors. While law teachers face serious challenges in incorporating government lawyering into legal ethics education, many of those challenges can be confronted and ameliorated. The …

Change At The Speed Of Leadership, Lee Fisher

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

“The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born—that there is a genetic factor to leadership. . . That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

“Lawyers are in the anomalous position of serving as leaders but generally lacking leadership training and skills. Competency in lawyering skills often functions as a proxy for leadership skills, despite the evidence that leadership skills are distinct and may take years to develop. Our neglect of leadership skills is reaching crisis proportions because nearly half of all current law firm partners will retire within the next ten …

Professional Identity In Time Of Uncertainty: Not Moment Too Soon, Margaret E. Reuter

Faculty Works

This essay introduces the UMKC Law Review Symposium on Professional Identity Formation and Its Pedagogy, situating the collection of articles against the backdrop of extraordinary social and political upheavals, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial justice movements, and threats to constitutional democracy. The Symposium brings together leading scholars and educators to explore how law schools can better prepare students to meet professional and societal demands by fostering a strong sense of professional identity. Themes emerging from the contributions include the integration of reflective practice, mindfulness, leadership, grit, growth mindset, externship experiences, and virtue ethics into legal education. Collectively, the works argue …

A Tribute To Professor Catherine Mahern, Lawrence Raful

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Using Experiential Learning To Create An Inclusive Classroom, Promote Equity, And Develop Professional Identity, Tianna N. Gibbs

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Legal education is changing. As law schools diversify their student bodies, they are being more intentional about the creation of an inclusive and equitable learning environment. Law schools also are engaging in curricular and pedagogical reform to better prepare students for law practice. Incorporating experiential learning into the law school curriculum has been a significant component of these reform efforts. The development of students’ professional identity also has become a focus of preparation for practice.

How And Why Did It Go So Wrong?: Theranos As A Legal Ethics Case Study, G. S. Hans

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The Theranos saga encompasses many discrete areas of law. Reporting on Theranos, most notably John Carreyrou's Bad Blood, highlights the questionable ethical decisions that many of the attorneys involved made. The lessons attorneys and law students can learn from Bad Blood are highly complex. The Theranos story touches on multiple areas of professional responsibility, including competence, diligence, candor, conflicts, and liability. Thus, Theranos serves as a helpful tool to explore the limits of ethical lawyering for Professional Responsibility students. This Article discusses the author's experience with using Bad Blood as an extended case study in a new course on Legal …

Preparing Lawyers For Practice: Developing Cultural Competency, Communication Skills, And Content Knowledge Through Street Law Programs, Ben Perdue, Amy Wallace

Articles & Chapters

Street Law is a legal education methodology designed to increase civic engagement, critical thinking skills, and develop practical legal knowledge in non-lawyers. Law students at Georgetown began using Street Law methods to teach high school classes in the 1970s. While Street Law was designed to help high school students, the programs were also crafted to provide authentic experiential opportunities for law students. However, little research had been done to measure the educational benefits for those law students. We designed the study that is featured in the article to assess those goals. We conclude that Street Law provides significant and often …

The Legal Scholar's Guide Book Reviews, Jamie Abrams

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

Success in law school and in the legal profession often involves mastering and navigating the plethora of unwritten rules and norms that govern institutions and communities. Differences in access to those unwritten rules can privilege and advance some while disadvantaging others. A second-generation law student, for example, is far more likely to know about the professional value of law review than a first-generation law student. Law scholarship is particularly plagued by an insularity that can yield a problematic echo chamber within elite institutions and privileged communities. Thus, the more legal scholarship can be explicitly demystified, taught, and mentored, the more …

Teaching Professional Responsibility Through Theater, Michael Millemann, Elliott Rauh, Robert Bowie Jr.

Faculty Scholarship

This article is about ethics-focused, law school courses, co-taught with a theater director, in which students wrote, produced and performed in plays. The plays were about four men who, separately, were wrongfully convicted, spent decades in prison, and finally were released and exonerated, formally (two) or informally (two).

The common themes in these miscarriages of justice were that 1) unethical conduct of prosecutors (especially failures to disclose exculpatory evidence) and of defense counsel (especially incompetent representation) undermined the Rule of Law and produced wrongful convictions, and 2) conversely, that the ethical conduct of post-conviction lawyers and law students helped to …

Ai Report: Humanity Is Doomed. Send Lawyers, Guns, And Money!, Ashley M. London

Law Faculty Publications

AI systems are powerful technologies being built and implemented by private corporations motivated by profit, not altruism. Change makers, such as attorneys and law students, must therefore be educated on the benefits, detriments, and pitfalls of the rapid spread, and often secret implementation of this technology. The implementation is secret because private corporations place proprietary AI systems inside of black boxes to conceal what is inside. If they did not, the popular myth that AI systems are unbiased machines crunching inherently objective data would be revealed as a falsehood. Algorithms created to run AI systems reflect the inherent human categorization …

The Voice Of The Gods Is Crippling: Law School For Helicoptered Millennials, Katerina P. Lewinbuk, Taci Villarreal, Elena Bolonina

St. Mary's Journal on Legal Malpractice & Ethics

As millennials dominate law school classrooms, many professors are recognizing the importance of altering the traditional methods of teaching law. Millennials act, think, and learn differently. Numerous factors are linked to why this new generation of law students is distinctively different than previous generations. This article examines these factors and how they influence millennials’ learning styles. Alternative methods of teaching millennial law students are also discussed and proposed, along with a specific example of a tailored professional responsibility textbook and course to the modern law student.

From Decoder Rings To Deep Fakes: Translating Complex Technologies For Legal Education, Jason Tubinis, Rachel S. Evans

Presentations

Technological developments are disrupting the practice of law” is a common refrain, but the last few years has seen some particularly complex pieces of technology become the hot new thing in legal tech. This session will look at blockchain, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and ‘Deep Fakes’ as examples of how instructors can stay abreast of technological developments and inform themselves about their impacts in the legal profession. Then we will look at how to translate the complexities and jargon of these examples into lessons for for-credit courses, one-off informational sessions, or meetings with stakeholders.

Learning outcomes:

• Participants will be able …

Law Schools Harm Genizaros And Other Indigenous People By Misunderstanding Aba Policy, Bill Piatt, Moises Gonzales, Katja Wolf

Faculty Articles

Law schools justifiably seek to enroll a diverse student body in order to enrich the academic experience and environment, and to provide attorneys who will serve all segments of our society. American law schools enjoy the constitutional right to maintain such diversity. Indeed, accreditation standards promulgated by the American Bar Association ("ABA") require it. The Association of American Law Schools carries a similar mandate.

In seeking to create a diverse student body, law schools offer applicants the opportunity to identify their backgrounds. There generally is no "diversity police" checking on the accuracy of the self-identification as a member of a …

Learning To Be More Than A Lawyer, Carol Morgan

Scholarly Works

No abstract provided.

Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective On Rural Access To Justice, Lauren Sudeall, Lise R. Pruitt, Danielle M. Conway, Michele Statz, Hannah Haksgaard, Amanda L. Kool

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

Rural America faces an increasingly dire access-to-justice crisis, which serves to exacerbate the already disproportionate share of social problems afflicting rural areas. One critical aspect of the crisis is the dearth of information and research regarding the extent of the problem and its impacts. This Article begins to fill that gap by providing surveys of rural access to justice in six geographically, demographically, and economically varied states: California, Georgia, Maine, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. In addition to providing insights about the distinct rural challenges confronting each of these states, the legal resources available, and existing policy responses, the Article …

“The Lost Lawyer” Regained: The Abiding Values Of The Legal Profession, Robert Maccrate

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

No abstract provided.

Lawyer ≠ Luddite, Jason Tubinis, Khelani Clay, Jim Henneberger, Zanada Joyner, Shannon Roddy

Presentations

Being a competent attorney means being a competent technologist. ABA Model Rule 1.1 (Competence) requires all lawyers to stay abreast of technology even if they still use a Dictaphone and typewriter and think “the cloud” refers to the fluffy white stuff in the sky. It can be malpractice to misuse or misunderstand technology, and this misuse can take many forms. Lack of familiarity with technology can lead to improper production of confidential information, delays in litigation, wasting time and client funds, ending up on Above the Law (and not in a good way), and more.

Legal technology courses are becoming …

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 …

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 …

Mediation, Legal Clinic Program

Course Descriptions and Information

Students will learn and develop skills crucial to the role of mediators and legal professionals. By focusing and implementing mediation methodologies, students will learn skills of active listening and communications; conflict, issue and interests spotting, information gathering and negotiations techniques; problem-solving strategies and approaches; and effective mediation settlement agreement drafting.

The "New Normal" For Educating Lawyers, Nicola A. Boothe-Perry

Journal Publications

This article examines who law professors are and what their roles consist of when educating law students. The article discusses the ethical and moral dilemmas that law professors can find themselves in while trying to be competent and trustworthy in their teaching. The article also discusses the role of mentor and counselor as they guide students’ in creating their professional identities.

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, …

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

Akron Law Review

I will first take a quick look in Part II at the basic data regarding employment statistics for recent law school graduates. This is the primary source of concern cited by those who argue that legal education is in profound crisis. What those statistics show, in a nutshell, is that large law firm hiring is down, but that small firm hiring is up by even more significant amounts, and that salaries for employed graduates continue to rise. What also continues to rise is the new law graduate unemployment rate, though not by the exaggerated dimensions some reports imply. New lawyers …

"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 …

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 …

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.