Constitutional Law

In Times of Crisis Are Lawyers Meeting Their Professional Responsibility?

by Douglas L. Colbert, professor of law, University of Maryland School of Law, and a Board Member of the Society Of American Law Teachers (SALT)

Are we in the legal academy doing enough to instill within our students a true understanding of their core ethical and professional obligation "as a public citizen having special responsibility to the quality of justice," described in the first sentence of the Preamble to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct? Specifically, I question the extent to which we as legal educators are teaching and instilling students to fulfill their pro bono duty "to provide legal services to those unable to pay." (See Model Rule 6.1)  

My idea for this project grew from two catastrophic events: the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Although individual attorneys stepped forward to assist the many people affected by 9/11, they represented only a small fraction of the New York and New Jersey bars. With regard to Katrina, the response is even more disturbing. Again, some lawyers volunteered to help New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents. However, the overwhelming number of attorneys chose not to. Thus, to cite one example of the consequences of lawyers' passivity, the New Orleans criminal courthouse remained closed for ten months, leaving thousands of people awaiting trial in jail and without access to court or to counsel.   

In response to Katrina's devastation, more than four thousand law students traveled to the Gulf Coast states during their school recesses between December, 2005 and spring, 2007 to lend assistance and create a national organization, the Student Hurricane Network (SHN). On several occasions, I accompanied and supervised Maryland law students as they entered Louisiana jails and interviewed these individuals for the first time since their arrests. Most students had just completed their first semester of law school. Afterwards, they asked: "Where are the lawyers? If we could do this with so little experience, why had so few attorneys volunteered?" 

Students' questions led me to write a law review article, Professional Responsibility in Crisis, 51 Howard L.J. 677 (2008), which is included as part of Howard Law Journal's symposium about the rule of law in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I sent reprints to every local and state bar association nationally to encourage a serious, thoughtful debate over the meaning of attorneys' ethical pro bono duties. Nationally, very few lawyers meet the ABA Model Rules recommended minimum of 50 hours annually, or less than one hour weekly, of pro bono service.    

My article provides a social context for tracing the profession's century-old canons of ethics and commitment to equal justice, public service, and pro bono activities and referred to the SHN law students' admirable example. During my research, I discovered many judges and lawyers who shared a strong interest in the legal profession, taking public service and pro bono responsibilities seriously. Yet, they cautioned against criticizing lawyers' inaction without examining law faculty's commitment to teaching a true picture of the professional ethic of service to community. Many attorneys complained that their law school experience had not prepared them for making public service an essential part of their professional lives. 

I accepted their challenge. I sent 2,500 reprints of my Howard article to law faculty who teach professional responsibility and then created a survey to determine the time faculty devote to the Model Rules' Preamble and Rule 6.1's pro bono obligation in the required professional responsibility courses. You can find my survey questions at Professional Responsibility Survey. I plan to include the results of my research in my next article, Teaching Professional Responsibility in Crisis. Because instilling an attorney's professional responsibility is a collective faculty effort and not limited to the professional responsibility course, I intend to ask law school deans to indicate the extent they believe schools are educating and reinforcing students with the ethical duty to meet their pro bono, public service.  

What do you think?   Are we doing an adequate job of preparing students for the practice of law and meeting their duty to serve the public? If not, how can we improve? How do we instill within our students an understanding of that special "responsibility to the quality of justice" that translates into their commitment as licensed attorneys to pro bono, volunteer work for people unable to afford private counsel?     

Full post as published by ACS Blog on August 22, 2008 (boomark / email).