Teaching Law Students about Ethics

A recent example of a problem involved a student who worked in Washington, D.C., on regulations before he became a law student. One of the Stanford clinics was in the midst of attacking the regulations, Marshall said.

Issues arising in that situation included whether the student could work on the matter and, if the student could not, could the rest of the clinic members proceed, Marshall said.

“It strikes me as providing a really good opportunity for the students to show them how relevant and important this stuff is in the daily life of a lawyer,” Marshall said.

Rubin said he encourages his former students to call him for help with ethical quagmires. Rubin said a former student called him while wrestling with a conflict-of-interest issue. That scenario wound up as a final exam question.

Rubin told the students, “There is no right answer. You have to take a position and defend it.”

Leslie Ann Reis, assistant professor and director of the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law at The John Marshall Law School, presents hypothetical situations or the factual basis of actual cases and has the students work through the ethical dilemmas.

“If you don’t take a very practical approach to teaching legal ethics, it’s not real to the students,” Reis said. “Rote memorization of rules or taking a philosophical approach to a class like this does not give students the tools they will need to become ethical, successful, competent, and professional attorneys.’’

Modern technology changed how lawyers communicate with clients, Reis added. The technology advances include e-mail and blogging.

“From my perspective, it’s absolutely crucial to give students an awareness of how the use of technologies intersects with the rules of professional conduct,” Reis said.

Reis said she uses real-world examples, such as whether lawyers can blog and still comply with the rules of professional conduct.

The content of a lawyer’s blog could raise various ethical issues, including whether the content could be viewed as an advertisement, Reis said.

Another issue could arise if a lawyer blogs about an ongoing case. A blog is generally accessible to the public, so content relating to an ongoing case conceivably could land in the realm of ex-parte communications with a judge, juror, or prospective juror and could violate the rules of professional conduct, she said.

“There are some advisory opinions’’ about such issues, Reis said. “But for the most part, this is an emerging interpretation of how the rules work in real life.”

Reis believes current students come into the ethics class with a good awareness of the technologies that could be used in the practice of law.

“They’re well-versed at using e-mail, instant messaging, and Twitter,” Reis said. “And it’s very interesting to see how they make connections about how they see the ethical rules applying to those tools.”

A young field

Ronald D. Rotunda, a professor with Chapman University College of Law in California, who did not take an ethics course while attending law school in the 1960s, noted that legal ethics rules have become more complex, especially in the area of conflicts of interest.

That trend is due, at least in part, to more mega-law firms, he said.

“The great lion’s share of ethics is conflicts of interest,” Rotunda said. “There are a lot of nuances to conflicts.”

Barbara Glesner Fines, associate dean for faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, has taught ethics classes there for more than 20 years.

Over that period, Glesner Fines has seen a growth in specialized ethics courses. For example, she teaches a course called “Ethical Issues in the Representation of Families.”

She also noticed an increase in the clinical portion of the law school curriculum.

“The increase in clinical and professional skills training goes hand-in-hand with an increased emphasis on professional responsibility and professional identity formation,” she said.

She explained that professional identity formation involves understanding what it means to be a lawyer and is a way of thinking that goes beyond rules and regulations.

Laurel S. Terry, a professor at Penn State University’s Dickinson School of Law, believes students are much more sensitive to ethical issues than they were 20 years ago.

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