Name: W. Bradley Wendel
Title: Associate Professor of Law
School: Washington and Lee University
Mailing Address:
Lewis Hall
Lexington, VA 24450
Phone: 540-458-8028
Email: wendelb@wlu.edu
Home Page: http://law.wlu.edu/faculty/profiles/wendel.asp
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Summary Description:
My co-teacher, Greg Cooper (a professor of philosophy) and I co-teach a course on legal ethics for law students and undergraduates, most of whom are considering attending law school. The course has two major objectives, both related to the overarching end of providing a bridge between the theory and practice of legal ethics and professionalism. First, the course aims to make connections between contemporary work in academic ethics and the concerns of practicing lawyers. We read recently published works by moral and political philosophers, along with classics in the field, always with an eye toward applying the readings to real dilemmas. Some of the works we have read include David Luban, Lawyers and Justice; William Simon, The Practice of Justice; Arthur Applbaum, Ethics for Adversaries; and Jeremy Waldron, Law and Disagreement. To make the exercise real, we work through detailed problems drawn from reported cases and the experiences of practicing lawyers. We refer constantly to the problems, challenging the students to use ethical arguments to resolve actual dilemmas. We have designed the problems so that the law does not definitively resolve them one way or the other. This puts the undergraduates and law students on an equal footing, and also helps counteract the tendency of law students to turn ethical dilemmas into legal problems.
The second principal goal of the course is to bring together academic ethicists, practicing lawyers and judges, and the students. We do this through an annual two-day Legal Ethics Institute, which is sponsored by the Program in Society and the Professions at Washington and Lee. Since Greg and I have taught this course, we have conducted the institute in the same way. The keynote academic participant is the author of one of the books we read in the course. The keynote participant gives a public lecture at the law school, and participates with the rest of the lawyers, judges, and students in roundtable discussions of ethical dilemmas. We generally invite six to eight lawyers and judges from a variety of practice settings in the past we have had large firm lawyers, solo practitioners, and sitting state and federal judges. The professionals are instructed to prepare case of their own to discuss at the Institute. They are urged to think of an ethical dilemma they have encountered in their practice in which the resolution was not a matter of law, but of ethical reasoning. At the Institute, the students, professionals, and academic participants discuss the resolution of cases presented by the visiting professionals and by the students. Greg and I serve as moderators, but do not attempt to steer the discussion in any substantive direction. Rather, the goal is to encourage interaction among the various groups, so that all can learn from each other.
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Program History:
Washington and Lee has had a Program in Society and the Professions for at least two decades. It was previously directed by Lou Hodges, a professor of journalism and an authority on journalism ethics. When Professor Hodges retired, Greg Cooper took over as director, and immediately sought to involve the law school in the Centers programming. The Center had always had the mandate to bring students and professionals together for an annual workshop, or Institute. The Center conducts four each year, in journalism, business, medical, and legal ethics. The new direction implemented by Greg and me has been to involve a prominent scholar in the relevant professional ethics discipline each year. In the four years we have conducted Legal Ethics Institutes, we have brought in David Luban, William Simon, Steven Lubet, and Arthur Applbaum. The students are amazed, and a bit intimidated, to learn that they will have an opportunity to interact with the author of one of the books they are assigned, but they quickly become enthusiastic critics of the text. In each of our Institutes, the students were prepared with wonderful, penetrating questions for the keynote presenter. The professionals also imagine they will have some fun taking potshots at the academics, whom they often suspect of being out of touch in their ivory towers.
At the Institute itself, however, the barriers that may have existed between the various constituencies quickly break down and the participants find themselves engaged in the common project of grappling with difficult ethical issues. The exciting thing about combining these diverse groups is that they come at the problem from such remarkably different angles the street-smart lawyers have a very different take on these issues than the often idealistic students and somewhat more abstract academics. The students present the cases we have discussed in class, but they are challenged by the lawyers to defend their analysis, so they must take into account not only the abstract ethical analysis but also the more pragmatic concerns of practicing professionals.
We have offered the program each academic year since 1999-2000. In each year we have had 16 student participants, along with 5 to 8 lawyers and judges and the keynote academic participant. Greg is on leave this year, so we are not offering the course in 2003-04.
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Confidential Items:
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Expanded Program Description (Optional):
The course is designed with several objectives in mind. First, the literature on teaching ethics and professionalism shows that it is important to make ethical dilemmas concrete. Live-client clinics and simulations both offer this advantage, which is why they are popular methods of teaching professional responsibility. Simulations are time-consuming and costly to design and implement, particularly if it is necessary to round up people to portray lawyers and clients. The Columbia Profession of Law Program, which is a week-long simulation-based course is an enormous undertaking. Even more limited simulations, such as a scenario prepared by the National Institute for Trial Advocacy that I presented in graduate school, require a lot of time and effort. The cases are a compromise. They are intended present enough detail to be realistic, but not so much detail that the students get bogged down. We try actively to put students in the role of the lawyer, and require them to make decisions, not just give both sides of the issue. (At one of the Institutes, David Luban did a wonderful job role playing a cantankerous client, much to the surprise of the students who had been presenting the case in a noncommittal manner.)
The other objective is to make interdisciplinary education practical. There are many courses on legal ethics which draw from philosophy, sociology, literature, theology, or other disciplines to inform the law governing lawyers. I am all in favor of these enrichment approaches, but there is always a danger that the course will become remote from the concerns of practicing lawyers. By teaching with concrete cases, we help mitigate this danger, but the best check is supplied by the practitioners who we know will be attending the Institute. If a mode of ethical analysis is too abstract, we know that one of the lawyers will demand us to justify its relevance. Or, more accurately, they will make this demand of the students, who engage in ethical analysis while presenting their cases at the Institute.
Another objective is to involve practicing professionals in the ethics education provided to law students. Lawyers and judges have a great deal to offer the students in the way of an in the trenches perspective on professional responsibility, but it can be difficult to bring these two groups together. The Institute provides a highly focused opportunity for interaction. All of the participants are prepared to work hard and spend a couple of days doing nothing other than talking about the ethical problems of the legal profession.
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Supporting Materials:
I will e-mail a copy of our discussion cases to the above address.