Academic

Teaching Creates A Conflict Of Interest For Adjunct Law Professor

By Dan Filler

According the New Jersey Law Journal, Rutgers is prohibiting Sheryl Mintz Goski, an adjunct professor, from continuing her gig teaching international mediation at Rutgers-Newark Law School because she represents a company in a dispute with Rutgers Business School.   She is being treated as an employee of Rutgers in the same a full time professor would:

A memo by John Wolf, the university's deputy general counsel, explained that schoolwide ethics rules prohibit faculty members from representing or negotiating on behalf of anyone outside the university in a matter pending before the university. The regulations mirror conflict-of-interest rules for all state employees, Wolf noted. "Rutgers legitimately may view Ms. Goski's representation of [the client] as interfering with her loyalty and commitment to the University," Wolf wrote. "Certainly, a member of the public with knowledge of her dual roles could reasonably believe that in representing [the client] Ms. Goski is violating her duty of trust to Rutgers by representing, presumably for personal economic benefit, a client with claims adverse to Rutgers." "Moreover, [the client] might believe that her employment by Rutgers gives it an advantage in securing a favorable resolution of its claim against the University."

Professor Goski kept the client and dropped Rutgers-Newark:

Goski argues that while she receives a check from the university and is therefore an employee, the rule is too broad. She says the relationship between an adjunct professor at the law school and a matter before the business school is too tenuous to create a conflict or even the appearance of one. "As an adjunct, I don't feel I represent Rutgers when I teach, I feel I teach at Rutgers," she says. "I'm not representing Rutgers in any sense. Adjuncts have no confidential access at all." "Rutgers is disserved because people may think they don't want to be bothered to spend all the time and effort to take an adjunct position, which is time-consuming, not just a couple of hours a week, for almost no money," she says. "People may just say forget it, they don't want to be bothered," she says. About 30 adjuncts are hired each semester at Rutgers Newark and the current salary is $1,325 per credit.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on May 21, 2009 (boomark / email).