Name: John Dzienkowski & Charles Silver
Title: Professors of Law
School: University of Texas School of Law
Mailing Address:
727 E. Dean Keeton St.
Austin TX 78705
Phone: 512-232-1367/512-232-1337
Email: jsd@mail.law.utexas.edu
csilver@mail.law.utexas.edu email
Home Page:
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Summary Description:
In 1996, John Dzienkowski and Charles Silver began using an internship component to the small ethics classes they taught at the University of Texas School of Law. The internship gives students an opportunity to become an Intern at the State Bar of Texas for one day to observe up to three disciplinary hearings and the deliberations by the panel on each hearing observed. Student sign up for these hearings currently on a website coordinated by the law school and the State Bar and in groups of three attend hearings in Austin and in San Antonio. The students must sign a confidentiality agreement outlining their responsibilities to maintain confidentiality as to everything they see and hear during the internship. They are permitted to write a generalized research paper on the experience to their law professors so that they can research the ethical rules in play during the disciplinary process. During the hearings, the lawyer who is the subject of the proceeding has the right to object to student attendance, but rarely does this occur. Thus, the students have a chance to see the regulatory arm of the bar in action.
In the hearing, the students witness a state bar prosecutors case against the accused lawyer and often observe the complaining witness and the lawyer testify before the disciplinary hearing. The students see the panels in action as they attempt to identify the facts. After the open but confidential hearing, the panel retires to a confidential deliberation and the students are given the opportunity to observe the process by which the panel reaches a decision on the case. Panel members often educate the students about the procedure and the law as well as their reasons for the decision. Student are not directly involved in the deliberations but they are often given the opportunity to ask questions.
After the hearing, students are asked to write a research paper on the process using a generalized and sanitized set of facts which is provided to the professor. They receive a grade on this process. The research paper allows students to research and write about the rules that were involved in the proceeding. Students are asked to study the problems presented in the case on a broader level as problems in the legal profession. Students are also asked to evaluate the internship and to offer suggestions for change.
We believe that this single experience has provided an excellent opportunity for students to study the regulatory process of the bar. This internship procedure could be and should be replicated by many state bars around the country. From our experience, we believe that this clinical style experience helps students entering the legal profession gain an appreciation for the state bar in their protection of the public status. It helps to inform the students understanding of the rules of professional responsibility as well as encourages students to become involved in bar activities in the future. This is the single most important development that we as ethics teachers have made in helping to infuse professionalism into the ethics curriculum.
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Program History:
In 1995, James McCormack, then General Counsel of the State Bar of Texas, met with John Dzienkowski and Charles Silver and asked us whether the law school would be interested in sending students to observe confidential lawyer disciplinary hearings. At this time, we were in the second year of a Keck Foundation grant and we had begun to teach ethics to smaller classes and in specialized courses. John Dzienkowski has since that time offered a course with a practitioner, Amon Burton to classes of fifty students who were expected to learn the subject through case studies funded by the Keck project. Charles Silver has also since that time taught a specialized course of Professional Responsibility for Litigators. We welcomed this outside class assignment into our teaching of professional responsibility.
Of course, there were many obstacles to making this a reality. First, in Texas, the lawyer disciplinary hearings are confidential. Thus, students would need to be bound to an obligation of confidentiality. Second, a decision had to be made whether lawyers could object to the presence of students. This was a state bar initiative that was not explicitly authorized by statute. Third, for the students to obtain the maximum benefit, they would need to sit in on the disciplinary committees deliberations. They really could not be observers; they would need to be interns in the state bar process. Finally, to make this meaningful, the students would need to somehow research and memorialize their experience without compromising the process. Thus, a procedure was developed whereby students would write an eight to ten page memorandum to the professors.
Since 1996, Professors John Dzienkowski and Charlie Silver and Adjunct Professor Amon Burton have sent between 500 and 800 students to the State Bar Internship process. For the first six years, this program was only open to the smaller classes taught by John Dzienkowski, Charlie Silver, and John Dzienkowski and Amon Burton jointly. In Austin, the grievance panels meet the second and fourth Thursday of every month and they can accommodate only 12 students a month in Austin. In San Antonio, the grievance panels meet every Wednesday and Thursday of the week so they can accommodate approximately 30 students a month. When we teach small classes, we have filled up the Austin sessions and often send students weekly to San Antonio to attend grievance hearings. In semesters when we do not teach our smaller classes, John Dzienkowski has during the last two years opened up the grievance process to his large classes of 140 students as one way to satisfy an outside class assignment in ethics. All of his students either participate in the state bar disciplinary internship or to interview a lawyer or judge about ethics issues and to write an eight to ten page paper on each experience. This allows the internship program to be offered to large and small classes.
Students enrolled in the Burton Dzienkowski Small Classes 90% participated
Spring 03 = 59
Fall 01 = 62
Fall 00 = 56
Fall 99 = 66
Fall 98 = 55
Fall 97 = 61
Fall 96 = 60
Spring 96 = 59
Students Enrolled in the Silver Course 100% Participated
Fall 95 = 41
Fall 98 = 11
Spring 99 = 13
Fall 99 = 59
Spring 00 = 37
Spring 02 = 45
Fall 02 = 42
Spring 03 = 14
Students in the Dzienkowski Large Class 20% approximately participated
Summer 02 180
Fall 03 - 144
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Confidential Items:
John Dzienkowski has saved approximately 150 hearing papers and evaluations from students over this time period from 1996 to the present. I will send you five sample positive evaluations from students as a separate attachment. I could provide many more evaluations if you wish, but they should be kept confidential as evaluations of the program from students. If you wish, I also could find 1-2 sample papers that I may lightly edit to remove references to time and place. Please let me know if you would like to see more evaluations or one or two sample memos.
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Expanded Program Description (Optional):
Program Goals and Objectives
We have one primary goal in developing and using the State Bar Internship program at the University of Texas School of Law: student exposure to professionalism and ethics issues in the practice of law. Courses in professional responsibility do not adequately prepare students for the role of ethics and professionalism in law practice. Students do not have the necessary background in the practice of law or connection to lawyers that is needed to foster inquiries into professionalism and ethics in the practice of law. By giving students an opportunity to observe a confidential disciplinary hearing at the State Bar of Texas, we believe that most of the students can develop an appreciation for (1) one major role of the State Bar, (2) the situation where two or three lawyers are accused of unethical behavior, (3) the decisionmaking process of the disciplinary committee composed of lawyers and nonlawyers, and (4) the importance of confidentiality through the agreement that the students sign with the bar.
Assessment Strategies and Outcomes
We ask students to include an assessment of the state bar internship experience. We read these assessments to determine whether we as professors can do anything to improve the program. We have improved the application process, via web application for the first time this semester, and communications with students on the day of the hearing, so as to inform students when hearings are postponed. The vast majority of evaluations indicate that the students enjoy immensely this experience and think that it improves their perspective on the subject of legal ethics. Also, from anecdotal evidence, graduates years later indicate that they remember this experience and often have become involved in local or state wide state bar activities because of this internship. We also understand from the State Bar of Texas lawyers and personnel that the disciplinary committees enjoy having the students present in the hearings and in the deliberations because they take this opportunity to educate students about the discipline process.
Optional Interview with a Lawyer or Judge
In some of our classes, the size of the class prevents every student from attending the state bar internship program. Also, some hearings are cancelled and then we need to have an alternative available for the students to fulfill the outside assignment. Thus, we have offered the opportunity for these students to interview a lawyer or judge about the ethical issues that these people face in their daily law practice. Although we are not submitting the interview option as innovative, we strongly believe that this outside assignment is as valuable in introducing students to ethics in the practice of law as is the internship program. We use guidelines similar to the ones used in the start bar paper where the students can write about confidential situations with a more generalized description of the facts to encourage practitioners and judges to be more candid.
Personnel to Run the Program
A description of the program would be incomplete without a discussion of the people needed to run this program. Professors are busy individuals and may not have the time or ability to organize such a project. Dee Welborn, Professor Dzienkowskis administrative assistant, is the State Bar Internship Coordinator at our law school and she coordinates all of the student slots with the State Bar of Texas. It was very important that the bar know who is coming and that each student bring with them a confidentiality agreement executed when they arrive. The bar could not chance a person coming in off the street to attend such a hearing and the bar does not have access to student records at our school. Dee Welborn would allocate slots among the groups of students in each class each semester and she would inform the bar as to the identity of the persons who would be coming to the hearing. In 2003, Dee and the State Bar automated the application process so it now is done on line. Only students with a UT Electronic ID can sign up and now the bar can log in and determine who will be coming down for a particular hearing. This has greatly streamlined the process and made it easy for all sides to process the student interns.
Both the Austin office and the San Antonio office of the State Bar of Texas have given us a contact person as well as the name of the attorney investigators. In Austin, their number is 453-5535 ext. 121 for Rosanne Rogers (Administrative Assistant), or ext. 102 for Al Adcock (Chief Investigator). In San Antonio, their number is 210/271-7881 ext. 230 for Marj Churchill (Investigator), or ext. 229 for Bob Brown (Investigator). These individuals are dedicated professionals who have made these programs possible. We are indebted to them for their additional effort that is not required by their jobs and certainly instrumental in bringing the disciplinary committees into the internship.
Effect of the Program
Although we have no precise measure of how this state bar internship program ultimately affects graduates, we do firmly believe that in a large school such as Texas, this clinical experience brings our ethics students closer to the bar. Students are shown a small glimpse into a regulatory system that is largely foreign to most lawyers. The often have the opportunity to see clients complaining about lawyers and how lawyers respond to the process. Although the cases that involve complicated substantive violations of the disciplinary rules may be more intellectual, we actually think that the communication and competence cases send a stronger message to students. Lawyers who fail to properly communicate with clients and lawyers who neglect client cases often have no defense in the state bar process. In an era when students themselves are often far less responsible than in the past, these hearings bring live situations to their consciousness. We believe these messages are ones that last and have influence in their law practice.
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Supporting Materials:
List of Supplemental Materials
1.State Bar Confidentiality Agreement
3.San Antonio Memo to Students
4.Instructions on Writing the Research Paper.
5.Instructions on Optional Interview of Lawyer or Judge
6.HTML Picture of Electronic Signup Website
7.5 Student Evaluations from the program - Confidential
8. C.V. for John Dzienkowski & Charles Silver
Awards for Participation in the Program
Both John Dzienkowski and Charles Silver received the BRAVO Award from the General Counsel of the State Bar of Texas in 1996 in recognition and appreciation for commitment to innovative legal education in the field of professional responsibility while teaching at the University of Texas School of Law during 1994-1995.