This course focuses on issues of professional responsibility and ethical legal practice. Using the framework developed in Albert O. Hirschman's influential Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, but proceeding in the opposite direction, the class will explore a variety of issues ranging from the ethics of cross examination to the special roles of lawyers representing or working for the government to the tensions faced by movement lawyers to decisions about when a lawyer should resign from a legal organization. Much of the focus will be on lawyers who work for public interest organizations or a government, but some of the discussion will consider issues in private practice as well. Materials will include case law, rules of professional responsibility, and less traditional sources. The aim of this course is not to prepare you to pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, because becoming an ethical practitioner is not a matter of acing a multiple choice test. (And you're all smart enough to handle the MPRE on your own.) Rather, it is to get you to think about the hard and messy ethical issues lawyers confront in their professional lives and what kind of attorney you want to become. Student assessment is based on class participation and two short papers. In addition to the regular Thursday class sessions, there will be three or four sessions with guest speakers. Attendance at these sessions is mandatory, but they will be taped for students who cannot attend (but who must attest to attending the sessions and then completing a short assignment.) This course satisfies the Ethics requirement for graduation.
3 units · Law Honors/Pass/Restrd Cr/Fail
This course focuses on issues of professional responsibility and ethical legal practice. Using the framework developed in Albert O. Hirschman's influential Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, but proceeding in the opposite direction, the class will explore a variety of issues ranging from the ethics of cross examination to the special roles of lawyers representing or working for the government to the tensions faced by movement lawyers to decisions about when a lawyer should resign from a legal organization. Much of the focus will be on lawyers who work for public interest organizations or a government, but some of the discussion will consider issues in private practice as well. Materials will include case law, rules of professional responsibility, and less traditional sources. The aim of this course is not to prepare you to pass the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, because becoming an ethical practitioner is not a matter of acing a multiple choice test. (And you're all smart enough to handle the MPRE on your own.) Rather, it is to get you to think about the hard and messy ethical issues lawyers confront in their professional lives and what kind of attorney you want to become. Student assessment is based on class participation and two short papers. In addition to the regular Thursday class sessions, there will be three or four sessions with guest speakers. Attendance at these sessions is mandatory, but they will be taped for students who cannot attend (but who must attest to attending the sessions and then completing a short assignment.) This course satisfies the Ethics requirement for graduation.
Offered in Spring 2026 at Stanford University.