Research Guides: Researching Legal Ethics & Professional Responsibility: Home (2023)

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The Professional Responsibility book in our Developing Professional Skills series--used as a supplement to your regular text book--makes it easy to integrate skills training into the professional responsibility classroom. The book contains ten exercises designed to develop practice skills of legal drafting, client interviewing and counseling, negotiation, and advocacy. Students spend a manageable one to two hours on tasks including: counseling a law student about bar admission; negotiating a sales agreement, consistent with ethical obligations to be honest in dealings with third parties; acting as bar counsel seeking discipline against an attorney for violating confidentiality obligations through online comments; preparing time entries in client billing statements that are consistent with a lawyer's obligations to clients; and drafting an advance conflict waiver.

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A study aid with practice final exam questions and answers pertaining to professional responsibility rules and their proper application. This text has 3 exams with a total of 181 questions.

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This Gilbert Law Summary is designed to serve three groups. The first is law students taking their required course in Professional Responsibility or preparing for the bar-required Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam. Second are persons considering a legal education who want to appreciate what it means to have a law license, what issues lawyers face, and how the law requires lawyers to deal with those issues. Third are lawyers who want a handy place to turn when they face a question in practice and need help finding quick answers and relevant authority to go deeper. Using the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, the ABA Model Code of Judicial Conduct, and the ALI Restatement (Third): The Law Governing Lawyers as key authorities, the author puts what otherwise could be abstract rules into context in order to illuminate what led to adoption of each rule, why the rules require what they do, and where changes in lawyer regulation may be coming. Substantive issues covered include how a lawyer and a client form their relationship, what fiduciary duties are and which ones a lawyer owes to his or her clients, how a lawyer markets and gets paid for his or her services, and various ways both confidentiality obligations and conflicts of interest can arise. In addition, the author calls attention to a lawyer's obligations to a client's opponents, courts and other tribunals, and the broader public interest, as well as a final chapter on the special responsibilities of judges.

Call Number: Online via Wolters Kluwer study aid subscription & Law Ref 2 KF306 .S79 2019

This study aid covers all heavily tested subjects on the MPRE and taught in a Professional Responsibility course. Concise introductions give an overview of each subject, including discussion of how the MPRE tests the topic. It provides a comparison to and contrast from related rules and provisions throughout the Model Rules or the common law. Practice questions highlighting important exceptions to each rule. Thorough coverage of the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct, including the official Comments and clarifying ABA ethics opinions. This book features multiple-choice questions integrated into a full-fledged review of the Professional Responsibility course. Clear explanations of correct and incorrect answers help to clarify nuances in the law. A more challenging final question at the end of each chapter (the "Closer") illustrates a sophisticated problem in the area under discussion. New to the Third Edition: Completely updated chapter on Advertising and Solicitation reflects the most recent changes to the Model Rules. New sections provide in-depth coverage of attorney-client privilege and work product protection.

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This book is designed to facilitate the introduction of international, transnational, and comparative law issues into a course on professional responsibility. Each section ends with numerous hypotheticals.

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High Court Case Summaries on Professional Responsibility contain briefs for each major case in Gillers' casebook on Professional Responsibility. These briefs are followed by a useful legal analysis, which provides extra tips and contextual background about each case, connecting the case to the broader concepts being developed throughout the casebook. This book also supplies case vocabulary, which defines new or unusual legal words found throughout the cases. Finally, to enhance the reader's recall, there is a corresponding memory graphic for each brief that portrays an entertaining visual representation of the relevant facts or law of the case.

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High Court Case Summaries on Professional Responsibility contain briefs for each major case in Jefferson's casebook on Professional Responsibility. These briefs are followed by a useful legal analysis, which provides extra tips and contextual background about each case, connecting the case to the broader concepts being developed throughout the casebook. This book also supplies case vocabulary, which defines new or unusual legal words found throughout the cases. Finally, to enhance the reader's recall, there is a corresponding memory graphic for each brief that portrays an entertaining visual representation of the relevant facts or law of the case.

Call Number: Online via West Academic subscription and Law Reserves KF306 .C52 2007

The Professional Responsibility audio lecture explains regulation of attorneys, bar admission, unauthorized practice, competency, discipline, judgment, layer-client relationship, representation, and withdrawal. It also discusses conflicts, disqualification, clients, client interests, successive and effective representation, integrity, candor, confidences, secrets, and past and future crimes. Other topics include perjury, communications, witnesses, jurors, the court, the press, trial tactics, prosecutors, market, solicitation, advertising, law firms, fees, client property, conduct, and political activity.

Call Number: Online via West Academic subscription and Law Stacks KF306.Z9 R668 2013

This book places the Rules in an historic context that lets the student understand problems with prior versions of the Rules, which led to the present version. The Nutshell also analyzes the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, Third.

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With seven chapters based upon real cases, real people, real documents, and real problems, this text incorporates Early Lawyering Literacy skills identified by the authors and recognized widely by the ABA and others. These case studies will aid students' mastery of core concepts regularly tested on the Multi-State Professional Responsibility Exam and encountered in everyday law practice.

Call Number: Available Online via West Academic subscription and Law Stacks KF306 .S57 2018

As the legal profession undergoes structural changes, longstanding principles of ethics still govern the day-to-day lives of practicing lawyers. This new Hornbook on professional responsibility provides both a snapshot of ongoing systemic changes and a thorough examination of the fundamentals of lawyer and judicial ethics. As a multi-dimensional work by scholarly experts in several fields, the Hornbook (1) begins with the changing environment in which legal services are provided in the modern economy; (2) continues with a theoretical grounding of legal ethics in moral philosophy; (3) offers empirical evidence and discussion about professional formation and moral development; (4) provides a comprehensive analysis of the law of lawyer ethics; (5) includes a rich discussion of the modern law of legal malpractice, and (6) concludes with exploration of the rules of judicial ethics.

Call Number: Online via West Academic subscription and Law Stacks KF306.A4 L37 2006

This unique collection of ten significant ethics rulings reveal the rich background surrounding salient cases on issues of race, gender, class, taxation, bankruptcy, defense representation, confidentiality, practicing with law partners, and greed. The story behind each case provides a look into its immediate impact as well as its continuing importance in shaping the law. This book serves as a reminder that ultimately law is about human beings, not "doctrines" or even "cases," because the human lives it addresses are real and vivid. The stories typify issues that most lawyers confront in one form or other at some time in their careers. In a striking way, the stories bring a human dimension to the pressures lawyers face, the ethical decisions they confront, the institutions they work in, and the daily choices they make.

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Nutshells are little paperback books that give a concise overview of an area of law. The initial chapters focus on key legal principles (such as professional negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and fraud), the role of experts in mal-practice litigation, important defenses, and the rules governing damages and fee forfeiture. Later chapters explore issues of great practical significance, including the vicarious liability law firms, common malpractice problems (such as conflict of interest), strategies for reducing errors and claims, and the role and limits of malpractice insurance.

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This text presents a concise explanation of the rules and concepts of lawyer professional responsibility. The book provides a straightforward treatment of the subject, with special attention to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and all recent amendments to those rules through the date of publication. For each topic, the book briefly addresses any relevant rationales, but primarily focuses on explaining the parameters of the applicable standards in a clear, understandable, step-by step manner. A typical treatment of a topic includes not only a clear explanation of each standard, often broken into manageable concepts, but also a simple example illustrating the application of that standard.

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The Office Hours series is a collection of short audio and video tracks that tackle some of the thorniest questions plaguing law students. Tracks include screening and conflicts of interest; lawyer withdrawal; financial assistance; lawyer adherence to client goals, rules of professional conduct; taking stock in clients; unearned fees and lawyer trust accounts; required disclosure to the court; and what happens when spouses or family members of the lawyer are on the opposing side.

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The Office Hours series is a collection of short audio and video tracks that tackle some of the thorniest questions plaguing law students. Tracks include unauthorized practic or law; ineffective assistance of counsel and duty of competence; confidentiality vs attorney-client privilege; lawyers as witnesses; requirement to let a criminal defendant testify; contingency fees; judges and disqualification motions; exculpatory evidence; false testimony by a client; and junior lawyers, senior lawyers and unethical behavior.

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This text covers the whole field of professional responsibility, focusing not only on the ABA Model Rules, but on the often-complex relationship between the rules and doctrines of agency, tort, contract, evidence, and constitutional law. Beginning with the formation of the attorney-client relationship, the book proceeds through topics including attorneys' fees, malpractice and ineffective assistance of counsel, confidentiality and privilege rules, conflicts of interest, witness perjury and litigation misconduct, advertising and solicitation, admission to practice, and the organization of the legal profession. Coverage includes all subjects that are tested on the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam (MPRE), including: A chapter on judicial ethics, a subject tested on the MPRE and not often covered thoroughly, if at all, in law school professional responsibility courses. Updated discussion and examples based on recent developments in the law, including the ABA's simplification of the rules on advertising and solicitation, new Model Rule 8.4(g) on discrimination in the practice of law, the California Supreme Court's Sheppard Mullin opinion on advance waivers of conflicts, and continuing developments in the impact of technology on the practice of law. A series of problems at the end of each section or chapter assist you in testing your understanding. Answers are provided for these problems. More MPRE-style multiple-choice questions in the Examples.

Call Number: Available Online via West Academic subscription and older edition at Law Reference 2 KF306 .R56 2002

In this examination of professional responsibility law, you'll find in-depth, substantive discussion supported by expert analysis and commentary, case citations, statutes, and court rules. Subjects include conflicts of interest, qualifications for the bar, regulating the market for legal services, competency standards, and disciplinary measures.

Authoritative coverage focuses on a lawyer's fiduciary responsibility. Text describes the legal profession's self-regulatory system and the professional codes that have emerged. Examines lawyers and the legal profession, including regulation and discipline. Provides a detailed discussion of the client-lawyer relationship. Judges and the quality of justice are also addressed. Provides systematic examination of the issues covered in the 1969 Code of Professional Responsibility and the 1983 Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

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This Understanding treatise analyzes the fundamental issues of lawyers' ethics and the ABA's Model Rules. It is designed to facilitate a real understanding of legal rules as distinguished from a superficial familiarity with them by challenging the reader to test their understanding of the legal rules against the reader's own moral standards and reasoned judgment. The fifth edition includes new chapters on Lawyers' Ethics in a Time of Crisis and Counseling Clients, Coaching Witnesses, and Cross-Examining to Discredit the Truth, and substantial updates on Judicial Ethics and more.

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The Weekend MPRE book and video course is designed to prepare users for the MPRE in a single weekend, primarily through thoughtful explanations of the most tested aspects of the rules of professional responsibility. This package includes the eBook, along with 12-month digital access to 14 videos, two practice exams, and quizzes.