Law and Ethics of Lawyering

Course Catalog Number:
5311
Course Credits:
3
Course Type:
Lecture
Course Priority:
Limited Enrollment - 3rd Year Priority
Graduation Requirements:
Legal Profession
Full Year Course:
No

Course Description

The usual vantage point of the law student and the lawyer is one outside the system of law.  Law is something we study, shape, use, support, attack, change, or act upon in one way or another. But this vantage point is an illusion. This course examines the boundaries of that illusion. It seeks to make manifest what has been implicit all along:  we, too, lawyers and law students, live within a world of law that demands our attention and response–a world of law that shapes our identities and relationships, threatens our disobedience with sanctions, and expresses some sense of the collective morality through which we can test our personal morality and commitment.
The course examines the content of the law that governs the conduct of lawyers, including for example, agency law, criminal law (what constitutes aiding and abetting a client’s fraud?), tort law (duties to clients and to third parties), civil procedure (the demands of Rule 11), and the codes of professional responsibility. It examines the world that law creates, and in which it operates: the criminal justice system, a corporate boardroom, law firms, and the law school.
This course meets the New York professional responsibility requirement. N.Y. Court Rules for Admission of Attorneys and Counselors at Law Rule 520.3(c)(1)(iii).