• OVERVIEW
• COURSE BOOK AND SYLLABUS
• COURSE COVERAGE
• A PRACTICAL, PROBLEM-DRIVEN APPROACH
• NON-LECTURE INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION FORMAT
• GROUND RULES AND GRADES
• ORIENTATION PROGRAM

NON-LECTURE INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION FORMAT

Learning about each other: During the first class, we take some time to go around the room to ask students what kind of law they are thinking of practicing and what their law-related work experience has been. This information emphasizes that the students offer diverse backgrounds, experiences, and aspirations that will help shape and enrich our discussions. We respond by telling the students about our own backgrounds and experience so that students may appreciate the particular perspective-and perhaps the particular biases-that we each bring to the classroom.

Student presentations: We assign two or three students to prepare a joint presentation on each problem. The student presenters are encouraged to be innovative. Freedom of approach helps engage these students-and the entire class-in the problem at hand. In the early weeks of the semester, we work closely with the student presenters to explain how they might approach their task. Students provide the class with a written handout containing an outline of their analysis and a list of applicable rules and other appropriate sources.

The teacher's role: Initially, the teacher's role is largely that of facilitator, allowing the presenters to make their points, and then guiding the student discussion by asking questions, playing devil's advocate, taking student "straw polls" to see how the class stands on tough issues, role-playing various parts (lawyers, clients, judges, supervisors) and, if necessary, making sure that all of the principal issues and significant ethics rules have been addressed. We liken the teacher's role to the captain of a ship who keeps a hand on the tiller while the students work to sail the ship, learning about the wind and currents along the way. If the students get off course, a light hand on the tiller, in the form of a question asked, a little devil's advocacy or a brief role play, generally rights the course.

Role-Playing: We make extensive use of brief role-plays in class to show students how ethical issues can be handled in practice. When asked what they would say in a particular situation, students almost always react by saying "I would say this," or "I would do that." Requiring students literally to act out the conversations between lawyer and client, lawyer and opposing counsel, lawyer and judge, and young associate and partner, or to state-rather than describe-their closing argument or deposition questions adds enormous value. Through the actual role-play, students are able to see whether what they "would" do is a workable solution. This also helps them take the next step beyond identifying ethical issues by developing the skills to effectively handle these issues in context.

The "right answers": Since the "right answers" to difficult ethical dilemmas are often elusive, we believe that recognizing the problem and discussing alternative approaches to solving it often becomes more important than reaching any one solution. When "black letter" rules conflict, we try to reassure students that the absence of a definitive "answer" is sometimes an acceptable reality.

While we focus on drawing out students' opinions and encourage them to express themselves without fear, students almost uniformly look to us to clearly state our own views before the discussion ends. In order for the students to get closure on an issue, they should hear these views clearly. To encourage free student debate, we try to withhold our own views until near the end of the discussion. It is often helpful to avoid taking too many strong, dogmatic-sounding stands on "right" and "wrong" answers, especially where the ethical choices are difficult or ambiguous. We try to emphasize that our answers are not always the only ones, but reflect our best efforts, given our experience and expertise, to resolve the matter.

Relinquishing control of the classroom: One of the questions we're asked most frequently is whether teachers can maintain control over the classroom and subject matter with this approach. We believe, and experience over many years has shown, that in our seminars (indeed, even in large sections) the professor does not lose control either over the classroom environment or the subject matter. While the atmosphere may be more free-wheeling than a lecture, the discussion has the full participation, and thus the attention, of the students.

By relinquishing formal control, the teacher can actually gain greater de facto control over a richer, livelier, and more wide-ranging analysis of the issues at hand.

GROUND RULES AND GRADES

Class presentations: During the course of the semester, each student makes two presentations on an ethics problem drawn from the course book. Students are paired for these presentations. We grade heavily the class presentations and other class participation-enhancing the discussion by participating meaningfully week by week-weighting them as much as two-thirds of the total grade.

Final examinations: We prefer to give our students take-home papers as opposed to traditional end of semester exams. Most of our teachers avoid short-answer final examinations; many of us strongly believe that such exams don't truly test the students' understanding of ethical precepts. Examples of final paper topics include asking students to write a law firm opinion letter about an ethical dilemma, or asking the students to take the role of staff counsel to a state ethics committee that has been asked to draft a new rule or ethics opinion on an emerging ethical issue.

The MPRE: In the first class, we emphasize that we do not consider it our role to teach the course in order to pass the MPRE. We have come to a policy conclusion that our students are capable of passing this examination without making it a specific target of our teaching. We offer a special, optional half-day weekend session outside of the regular classroom curriculum that is devoted solely to passing the MPRE exam. The session serves the purposes of meeting the needs of those students most concerned about the test while keeping the integrity of the course offering intact.

Students are generally confident about passing the MPRE without a course geared to its passage. Course evaluations have not indicated that significant numbers of students are concerned about lack of preparation for this exam.

ORIENTATION PROGRAM

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