Publisher's Synopsis
Ethical Problems in the Practice of Law is a problem-based casebook sure to generate lively class discussion. Using real-world problems and cases, with emphasis on issues students are likely to face in their early years of practice, it places students in the lawyers’ position to engage in simultaneous strategic and ethical analysis of each problem. A strong Teacher’s Manual includes detailed scripts for discussion, reveals actual outcomes of problems, and comes in hard copy and an e-version, making it easy for professors to cut-and-paste material into their own class notes.
The Third Edition includes hundreds of new examples and introduces new material on current ethical issues. Outsourcing, contract lawyers, Internet advertising, and nonlawyer ownership of law firms are given thorough treatment, as are recent changes in rules and Justice Department policies. Sure to stimulate discussion, the companion website features a new recorded interview with the Guantanamo defense lawyer ordered to represent an unwilling defendant.
Hallmark features:
• Co-authors Lerman and Schrag bring a broad range of teaching, consulting, clinical research, and policy-making experience to this problem-based text.
• Contemporary approach succinctly covers all essential topics through clear, thorough exposition.
• Challenging problems compel students to engage in simultaneous strategic and ethical analysis.
• Comprehensive presentation of all ethics and professional responsibility topics and issues, including:
• Confidentiality and conflicts.
• Ethics rules.
• Legal malpractice.
• Disqualification.
• Criminal law.
• Wrongful discharge.
• Pertinent constitutional law.
• Lawyer’s public responsibilities.
• More than 70 compelling, detailed problems, based on real cases and real-life situations that students are likely to experience during their first years of practice.
• Famous and less well-known cases are the basis of most of the problems, placing students in the lawyer’s role.
• Recent and projected changes in the legal profession, including those resulting from the 2008 financial collapse.
• Distinct graphical elements appear throughout to help students see the relationships among parts of rules or theories.
• The Teacher’s Manual includes narrative summaries of each of the problems, detailed scripts for classroom discussion, and revelations of what really happened in these not-so-hypothetical scenarios.
• An electronic version of the Teacher’s Manual is included, enabling professors to paste the authors’ scripts for classroom discussion into their own class notes.
• A website for the book provides the latest updates for students and includes audio interviews (for teachers to play in class) with lawyers who handled the cases that became problems in the book.
Thoroughly updated, the revised Third Edition presents:
• Hundreds of new examples.
• New material on the changing legal profession, including:
• Developments on the acceleration of outsourcing legal work to India.
• Law firms’ increased use of contract lawyers.
• Internet advertising.
• Third-party financing of lawsuits.
• International pressures to permit both multidisciplinary practice and nonlawyer ownership of law firms.
• Rules changes to allow screening to resolve some imputed conflicts of interest, and changes in the ethics rules for prosecutors.
• Changes in the Justice Department’s policy toward waivers of the corporate attorney-client privilege.
• Several new problems, including one based on the case of a former prosecutor who withheld evidence of another prosecutor’s misdeed, resulting in the conviction of an innocent man.
• On the website, a new recorded interview with the Guantanamo defense lawyer who was ordered to represent a defendant who did not want to be represented.
