Legal Ethics 733532
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Description
Teaching Dates: Monday 6 July to Thursday 16 July 2009
To view the materials on the LMS/Blackboard Legal Ethics subject page, please click here.
As Legal Ethics is studied toward the end of the JD, it is able to consolidate the ethical dimension of other subjects, as well as critique ethical assumptions made in other subjects about the role of lawyers.
Legal Ethics is a practical and critical introduction to ethical decision-making for lawyers. It introduces different moral approaches, focusing on the justifications for and criticisms of the traditional adversarial advocate approach and alternatives to it. The course also critically examines the way that the legal profession has developed and is organised and how it is currently regulated, including through admission and disciplinary processes. It also examines the law of lawyering that applies to lawyers including laws and professional conduct rules relating to conflicts of interest, confidentiality, privilege and the duties owed by the lawyer to the court, as well as circumstances in which lawyers have an immunity from civil liability (advocates immunity). Students will be expected to identify and resolve ethical issues that arise in legal practice by applying the law of lawyering as well as understand the rationales for, as well strengths and weaknesses of, the current law of lawyering. Students will also be expected to critically assess the way lawyers' ethics are regulated by these rules against different moral approaches to legal ethics.
Legal Ethics builds on the knowledge and skills developed in a number of earlier subjects in the curriculum, including primarily Dispute Resolution (regarding the role of lawyers in relation to dispute handling, and duties to the client and the court), Obligations (contractual, equitable and statutory obligations to the client), Torts (lawyers’ liability in negligence), and to a lesser degree, Principles of Public Law (regarding the regulation of lawyers), Constitutional Law (regarding arguments for and against self-regulation of lawyers, and regulation of lawyers at a State level) and Legal Theory (regarding perceptions of justice).
Legal Ethics will normally be taught simultaneously with Evidence& Proof. This allows for an integrated approach to issues such as Client Legal Privilege and the lawyer’s obligations in regard to the admissibility and validity of evidence to be tendered in court.
Legal Ethics takes special responsibility for the development of skills in considering a range of options in response to a legal problem and in identifying those which are sound and principled, as well as skills in judgment and diplomacy.
PreRequisites
Legal Method and Reasoning, Principles of Public Law, Torts, Obligations, Dispute Resolution.
