Categories: Legal Profession

Instructor(s)

Varsava, Nina

Course Data

Room 5229
MW 10:30am-11:50am

Pass/Fail: No

Course Description

This course examines the ethical and legal responsibilities of lawyers. We will focus on the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct as well as Wisconsin’s Rules of Professional Conduct for Attorneys, but we will also study other sources of professional responsibilities, including judicial decisions, rules of civil procedure, the U.S. Constitution, and morality itself.

We will analyze case studies on a variety of topics, including lawyer fees and access to justice, paternalism and the allocation of authority between lawyer and client, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, zealous advocacy, judicial conduct, and the effects of technological innovations on the legal profession. Students will learn to recognize ethical problems and will develop tools for solving them. We will grapple with some of the many thorny and fascinating questions of legal ethics. For example, to what extent may lawyers deceive others to further their clients’ interests? Overall, the course invites students to contemplate what kind of lawyers they aspire to be, and what kind of profession they wish to join and to shape.

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