Legal Commentary

One of my upcoming classes this semester is Legal Profession -- also called Legal Ethics most places.  This will be the fourth time I've taught the class, and like many others, I've found it a difficult course to teach.  Many students feel like a captive audience, and many legal ethics teachers feel like captive performers; it's code-based, with all the attendant difficulties of mixing code and cases; and so on.  I also struggled to find just the right book, burning through three books in three years.  I've finally settled on the Lerman & Schrag book, which I quite like; it's not quite as intellectually searching as some of the texts, but I find it teaches very well indeed in the classroom and I think their supplemental materials (to be honest -- the teacher's manual) are great.  (Of course, after I got through the book last year, they issued a new edition, so in a sense I'll have done four books in four years.  Oy!) 

I've also assigned Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons this year, although I'm still unsure about how and where it will fit in; still, I'm excited about giving students the book as a basis for thinking about what kinds of lawyers they want to be, what the proper role of "cunning" is in a lawyer's life, and what part of their professional or ethical life must remain unimpregnable.

Lerman & Schrag works so well as a casebook because it contains many superb class exercises, and I found the class very responsive to them last year.  Here's what I say about class exercises in my syllabus this year:

This will be a heavily participation-oriented course, centered on the problems contained in each chapter and noted above in the schedule of readings.  Each week, half of the class will be on call.  If it is your week on call, you should be especially prepared to talk out loud about the problems, the issues they raise, and the Model Rules and other legal doctrines implicated by each one.  You may be asked to play the role of one of the characters in the problem, to perform in front of the class in teams, to lead the class in an exercise, to perform an interpretive dance, to express your views about the materials through the medium of show tunes, to take up the deadly serpent, or a variety of other activities.  Even if you are not singled out to perform in this manner, you will still be responsible for taking an active role in class discussion for the week.

My colleagues' advice is always welcome, so let me ask: are these expectations too onerous? 

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