Phone: 505-277-3119
Fax:
Email: schwartz@law.unm.edu
Home Page: --none--
******************************************************
Summary Description:

THE HUGH MUIR OATH PROJECT AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY DAY

This application is based on the first and second year elements of a more comprehensive professionalism curriculum now in place at the University of New Mexico. In the first year professionalism concerns are initially addressed through the Hugh Muir Oath Project, while second year students are exposed to a sophisticated analysis of professionalism issues through Professional Responsibility Day.

The Hugh Muir Oath Project

During the first year orientation, before the first day of classes, students are exposed to a number of lawyers who describe the role of ethics and professionalism in the practice of law, and students are encourage to reflect upon the reasons that they chose to go to law school and the impact their practice could have on the society. As a part of this orientation program, students are assigned to prepare the oath that they believe should guide them when they enter the practice of law. The oath – which, in fact, can be written in the form of an oath, a statement, a prayer, a poem, a piece of two dimensional art, or in any other form chosen by the students – is due two weeks later. The assignment is required of all students, although it is ungraded.

All of the oaths are compiled into a book, which is distributed to all members of the first year class, all law school faculty, and all members of the New Mexico judiciary. In addition, a committee of judges chosen from the state and federal bench (and, sometimes, from among bar officers) meet to select between ten and a dozen particularly moving oaths. The authors of the selected oaths receive a special prize at a professionalism convocation sponsored by the judiciary and the law school. In addition, during the students’ third year their clinical teachers post the oaths they wrote during their first year to remind them of how they viewed the practice of law when they began their studies.

Professional Responsibility Day (also known at the law school as “Law and Medicine Day”)

During the second year of professional education, all law school and medical school classes at the University of New Mexico are cancelled on one afternoon. On that day all second year law students and medical students meet together to discuss issues of professional responsibility. Although the programs have varied each year, they often begin with brief statements by the deans of the law and medical schools. The students are then divided into small groups of ten to fifteen students, half law students and half medical students, to discuss questions of professional responsibility. The groups are facilitated by a faculty member from the law school and one from the medical school, and the problems are set in either the practice of medicine (with an analogous legal question) or the practice of law (with an analogous medical question), or in the life of a professional student.

******************************************************
Program History:

The Hugh Muir Oath Project

The Hugh Muir Oath Project, named for a tax professor who was the moral compass for the law school for a quarter of a century, was instituted in the late 1990s. Originally participation was voluntary, but by 2001, in response to the value placed on the project by the state bar, it became required of all students enrolling in the first year. By 2003 the program was fully institutionalized as a part of the orientation program, and the law school plans to maintain it. The Law School now maintains the proposed oaths of over 500 law students in the library.

Students are provided with a booklet of sample oaths, including the current state bar oath, the Indian Lawyer’s Creed, the Hippocratic Oath and the Prayer of Maimonides (both from medicine), and, during some years, a host of other samples including the official Oath of Elvis Impersonators. Several students, who start bewildered by this assignment, raise it in their newly founded study groups, and many stop by to meet faculty and inquire about the assignment. It provides an exceptional opportunity to integrate new law students into the law school culture and the environment of the bar.

The panel which selects the exemplary oaths is itself chosen primarily from the judiciary, but some years it is also chosen from among other leaders of the bar. Almost every member of the current state supreme court has participated, as have many of the state court of appeals judges, the most respected of state trial court judges, and United States District Court and Court of Appeals judges. The president of the state bar and chair of the young lawyers division have also participated. The judges have been pleased to come to the law school for the presentation of the awards, which are usually signed copies of books written by members of the faculty.

Professional Responsibility Day

Professional Responsibility Day was inaugurated in the early 1990s, when first year students at the law school were brought together with first year students from medicine, nursing, and pharmacy. The first program was a primarily large group program featuring law school and medical school officials, officers from the state bar and the state medical society, and a philosopher who explained how it was that the same issues in professionalism arose in both law and the health sciences.

During later years the program was changed to provide more time for small group discussion (which proved far more valuable than large group lectures), and second year students, who had a background in the culture of the professions, were chosen to replace first year students. The move from first year students to second year students meant there was one year in the early 2000s when the event was not convened (because all of the second year students had been involved as first year students). Some third year transfer and visiting students are also accommodated. One year the students were asked to fill out a pre- and post-discussion questionnaire to determine if law students and medical students evaluate ethical questions differently; the subsequently published study suggested that gender was probably more significant than discipline. The program has also been tried at two other universities – University of Tasmania (Australia) in the early 1990s and Southern Illinois University in the late 1990s.

Today over 1000 law and medical students have experienced the program, which has given rise to many interdisciplinary friendships, and even a few interdisciplinary marriages.

******************************************************
Confidential Items:
Please do not publish the oaths written by individual students without their permission. I will be happy to arrange for permission should you wish to publish those oaths.

******************************************************
Expanded Program Description (Optional):

Please see attached and separately submitted materials.

******************************************************
Supporting Materials:

The following materials are being submitted separately from this application form:

I. With regard to the Hugh Muir Oath Project
A. General Information (pdf file) for Participants and Sample Oaths (bound volume)(sent under separate cover)
B. Full Text -- All Student Oaths, Fall 2004 (bound volume)(sent under separate cover)

II. With regard to Professional Responsibility Day
A. Problems for Discussion Groups, Fall 2004 (3 pp.; sent by e-mail and under separate cover)
B. Memorandum to Facilitators, Fall 2004 (4 pp.; sent by e-mail and under separate cover)
C. Proposed Schedule for Professional Responsibility Day, Fall 2005 (1 pg.; sent by e-mail and under separate cover)