Open AccessJournal Article
Teaching Ethics Seriously: Legal Ethics as the Most Important Subject in Law School
TLDR
Despite the strong commitment of leaders of the bar and legal education to improve the ethics of law students and lawyers, legal ethics remains at best a second-class subject in law school.Abstract:
Despite the strong commitment of leaders of the bar and legal education to improve the ethics of law students and lawyers, legal ethics remains at best a second-class subject in law school. The Article explains “that that the persistent disregard for teaching legal ethics is grounded in three outdated ideological perspectives:” an unproven faith in the moral superiority of lawyers and of legal education, an outmoded pedagogical approach grounded in a late nineteenth century understanding of legal education that rejects teaching values, and a preconceived notion that as adults law students lack the capacity for moral development. Contrary to these biases, current scholarship demonstrates the potential for teaching law students ethics. This can only be done effectively through a first year course that teaches both doctrine and the role of the lawyer in society, and that sends students a message that ethical responsibility is central to thinking and acting like a lawyer. Taking the rhetoric of commitment to ethics seriously would also require both pervasive ethics education and a required upper class course focused on ethical issues related to each student’s preferred practice area.read more
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Dissertation
Thinking and feeling like a lawyer: introducing knowledge about emotion into legal ethics education
TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that including the emotional aspects of legal-ethical judgment will make legal ethics education more comprehensive and better equip law students for the reality of making ethical judgments in practice.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Role Of Ethics In Legal Education Of Post-Soviet Countries
Abstract: Abstract The neglect of lawyer ethics in legal education, including in continuing legal education for lawyers and judges, is an enduring Soviet legacy in post-Soviet countries. Partially because of this neglect, many people in post-soviet countries do not trust lawyers. Their mistrust often is for good reason—too many lawyers are unethical. Yet, unethical lawyers do more than alienate others and cast the legal profession in disrepute. Unethical lawyers waste resources by unnecessarily prolonging disputes and inflaming antagonisms by provoking unjustifiable confrontations. Worse, they corrupt the legal system by bribing judges, suborning perjury, and using other illegal means to achieve their ends. Thus, they contribute to an all-too-common failure in post-Soviet countries—the failure to achieve the rule of law. The academic literature is replete with commentary about the place of ethics in legal education. Some argue that ethics instruction is unnecessary. They claim that allusions to ethics in other courses, the law school culture, and the ethics learned earlier in life is sufficient. Others posit that ethics are too important to omit from the law school curriculum. They often add, however, that legal ethics instruction in law school commonly involves little more than demanding that law students memorize rules or codes of conduct. This article discusses whether the ethics education of future lawyers in post-Soviet countries is adequate. Concluding that it is not, this article proposes suggestions for the content of an Eastern European legal ethics course and methods for teaching law students to internalize ethical norms as a part of their legal education.
Posted Content
Culture - The Body/Soul Connector in Negotiation Ethics
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that having workable guidelines to make ethical decisions in negotiation is no less important than knowing the skill sets for when to make the first offer, or how to close a deal.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Bank and Credit Union Disasters in Lithuania: Where Were the Lawyers?
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative analysis of the regulation and practice of the legal profession in considering whether and how outside and inside bank and corporate lawyers can be effective gatekeepers, foreseeing, preventing, and mitigating such collapses is presented.