Ethics and legal education

What’s new in ethics

Preparatory ethics training for future solicitors – the recommendations of the Economides & Rogers report have largely been endorsed by the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority; see Promoting ethical lawyering for a summary

Particularly since the advent of the Human Rights Act 1998 it has become ever more important that the law degree enables students to consider the role of law in society, both as an instrument of regulation and change (ie its political and social role) and as the means by which ‘justice’ is delivered to the citizenry at large.

At the undergraduate stage it is a requirement of the law benchmark statement that students should be able to demonstrate an understanding of the ethical context in which law operates. Vocational courses emphasise the importance of professional codes of ethics, as well as raising awareness of the limitation of rules as determinants of ethical behaviour.

The teaching of ethics has tended to be implicit rather than explicit within the curriculum at the undergraduate level. A review of current practice, plus the identification of effective approaches and the dissemination of examples and advice is required in order to support law teachers at every stage of legal education and training to construct and deliver learning opportunities that enable students to grapple with some complex issues. These learning opportunities are not only important in the grooming of the next generation of lawyers – they are also key to the development of the higher order abilities of independent learning, analysis, synthesis and critical thinking specified in the law benchmark statement.

Teaching legal ethics

• Teaching legal ethics in context – guide to teaching legal ethics by Alwyn Jones (De Montfort University)
• Using scenarios to teach ethics – four scenarios for group discussions contributed by Alison Dempsey (University of British Columbia)
• Putting ethics into practice – case study (includes a number of discussion scenarios) contributed by Sara Chandler and Pamela Robotham (College of Law)
• Making choices about lawyers’ ethics: integrating an ethical dimension into a simulation – Directions article describing the teaching of ethics on a clinic-based module, by Alwyn Jones and Omar Madhloom (De Montfort University)
• Teaching environmental law, ethics and sustainability – case study on a masters level module synthesising law, ethics and sustainability, contributed by Simon Payne and Jason Lowther (University of Plymouth)
• ETHICS project – details of UKCLE participation in the inter-disciplinary ETHICS project, which developed a guide on teaching ethics across the curriculum (PDF file) and a bank of case studies (including four law-based)
• A place for ethics in the legal syllabus? – LILI 2002 keynote address by Lord Justice Potter
• ‘Responsibility and ethics in legal education’ – chapter by Nigel Duncan (City University) in Effective learning and teaching in law
• Legal ethics at the academic stage: exploring the issues – slides from this UKCLE event, held in May 2010

Resources on ethics

• IDEA~CETL – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning on inter-discipinary ethics, focusing on curriculum development across a range of disciplines; resources include an introduction to ethical thinking and a Professional Ethics Network
• Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law and Society – connecting researchers and practitioners in medicine, science, the social sciences and humanities
• Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions – US centre promoting ethics education and scholarship
• Ethics – international journal of social, political and legal philosophy
• Legal Ethics – journal devoted to the field of legal ethics
• Legal Ethics Forum, a US based blog, for the latest on law and ethics

Research ethics

• Good ethical practice in empirical research on law – UKCLE guide to research ethics written by Mark Israel and Iain Hay (Flinders University)
• ESRC Research ethics framework
• Statement of principles of ethical research practice – Socio-Legal Studies Association
• New ethical challenges in socio-legal research – report from the Socio-Legal Studies Association conference held in 2004

International conference on legal ethics

A biennial conference is held to explore legal ethics:

• First International Conference on Lawyers’ Ethics – University of Exeter, 6-7 July 2004
• Second Conference of the International Society for Legal Ethics – University of Auckland, New Zealand, 23-25 June 2006
• Legal Ethics 2008: 3rd International Legal Ethics Conference – Griffith University, Australia, 13-16 July 2008 – read the report by Lisa Webley
• International Legal Ethics Conference IV: The legal profession in times of turbulence – Stanford Law School, USA, 15-17 July 2010

Last Modified: 4 June 2010