Many of the most articulate advocates for reform in legal education are academics who write and teach about legal ethics and professional responsibility, and I greatly enjoyed this blog's symposium on the challenges facing law schools in light of current economic realities.
I taught professional responsibility ("PR") for the first time this past semester as a fellow at Temple. I began the class with a discussion of some of the issues currently facing law students and young lawyers. I also assigned Patrick Schiltz's article, On Being a Happy, Healthy and Ethical Member of an Unhappy, Unhealthy and Unethical Profession. I decided to begin the semester this way after reading this blog post from Prof. Horwitz, and one of my colleagues at Temple has been assigning the Schiltz article for years.
The frank discussion that ensued in the first class was unlike anything that I have experienced as either a law student or legal educator. More importantly, I believe that it helped contribute to an atmosphere in which students felt free to share their opinions on sensitive ethical issues throughout the semester. I plan to continue to start my PR class this way when I teach the class at Texas Wesleyan in the Fall.
There was one unexpected consequence, however. Increasingly students began to turn to me for both career advice as well as general guidance as to what to expect from their legal careers. I was obviously happy to listen to them. However, my own legal experience consists predominately of four years as a corporate litigator in New York City so I am uncertain how applicable any advice I provided really was to my students.
I think PR professors - more than most other faculty members perhaps - often serve as a link to the legal profession, and we are obviously the primary faculty members responsible for instilling "ethical lawyering." However, how far do these duties extend? To be a credible PR professor, must one lead the charge to reform his or her institution to the extent that he or she believes that it is not responding appropriately to the current challenges facing the profession? Should a PR professor be required to speak out if his or her institution has been disseminating overly rosy snapshots of students' employment outcomes (as has been alleged against most law schools)? And how to balance any such obligations with the central mission of teaching and producing scholarship?
These questions likely have salience for all legal academics, but given the closeness to our area of expertise, is it incumbent on PR professors to take a more active role in law school reform broadly understood?