Examples & Explanations for Professional Responsibility

"This may be the course in law school in which there is the most variation in subject matter and emphasis. Torts is torts, evidence is evidence, but students are often unsure of the scope of a course in professional responsibility. This identity crisis is revealed in the variety of course titles used by schools: professional responsibility, the legal profession, lawyers and clients, legal ethics. There seem to be at least two distinct subjects wrapped up together under the label of professional responsibility, one having to do with law, the other having to do with standards of right and wrong that are independent of the law. The American Bar Association (ABA) insists that all accredited law schools require a course in the "history, goals, structure, duties, values, and responsibilities of the legal profession and its members." ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools, Standard 302(b). This language is pretty broad, and a wide variety of courses can be offered that satisfy the ABA's requirement, as long as the course includes some instruction about the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. Owing to the flexibility of the ABA's standard, and the fact that law professors have many different approaches to the study of the legal profession, you could conceivably study the rules of professional conduct or the law of malpractice and litigation sanctions, or you could take an interdisciplinary approach borrowing from literature, films, moral philosophy, sociology, or theology, in a course called professional responsibility"--