Abstract
For too long, the teaching of professional responsibility has generated dissatisfaction on the part of faculty and students alike. Complaints abound of dry and mechanical exploration of rules and cases and an emphasis on abstract philosophical concepts that lack the framework to establish a meaningful understanding of the pivotal role professional responsibility plays in the daily life of a lawyer.1 While the problems inherent in teaching the subject have long been recognized, little real progress has been made to move away from the traditional large class lecture/discussion teaching methodology still prevalent in the curriculum of many law schools. If anything approaching progress can be claimed, it is only in the recognition that traditional teaching methods do not adequately present the subject in a way that both stimulates and informs students, and allows them to assimilate the information and skills necessary for the ethical pursuit of a career in the law. The solutions that have generally been proposed to deal with the problems surrounding the teaching of professional responsibility seem to fall into two basic categories. The first attempts to address the perception that the course lacks sufficient intellectual and doctrinal content to give it the kind of stature that other courses in the curriculum command. Without such stature, it is argued, neither students nor faculty will perceive professional responsibility as a subject that belongs at the core of a program to prepare students for their role as lawyers. In other words, if professional responsibility courses were structured to look and feel more like such core courses as Contracts, Torts, and Property, students and faculty would take the class more seriously than they currently do.2
Published Version
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