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Nothing is more integral to the role of attorney than ethics, and no subject elicits more resentment and boredom from attorneys when it is the topic of a seminar.
ProEthics has developed a new approach to teaching legal ethics, designed to stimulate and engage while sacrificing nothing in substance and content.
Field tested before thousands of practitioners, the ProEthics approach uses humor, entertainment, and interactive techniques to ensure that participants remain focused and involved. Bar rules and Codes of Professional Responsibility are combined with basic ethical principles to address difficult hypothetical dilemmas, usually derived from actual cases. The course gives participants a solid foundation in ethical decision-making to complement those tools, enhancing sensitivity to ethical issues as well as awareness of how to avoid problems before they arise.
The Method
Each seminar begins with an introduction to the various ethical systems that must be part of the attorney's decision-making process. There is special emphasis on the inevitable conflicts among these systems, as well as the conflicts between various jurisdictions' codes of professional ethics. Using analogies from popular culture, sports, psychology and history, the ProEthics facilitator places the professional rules in the context of real life considerations and explores various methods of applying them.
The main body of the course is composed of 10 to 14 hypotheticals, some read aloud, some dramatized by the facilitator or others. Typically each covers multiple ethical issues. The participants then answer multiple choice questions to stimulate discussion. During the course of the debate, the facilitator examines the relevant rules as well as the particular jurisdiction's legal ethics opinions, court opinions, and germane treaties and law review articles.
The Options
- The seminars are adaptable to both convention-sized audiences and law firm programs.
- ProEthics will customize hypotheticals or create new ones to cover issues that are of special interest to a particular group.
- Each seminar is also available in a two-facilitator format, typically featuring a practitioner advocating a practical, utilitarian approach paired with Mr. Marshall arguing a more elevated ethical stance. The lively debates between the facilitators has been shown to greatly stimulate discussion and further enhance the seminars.
- If desired, all or some of the hypotheticals can be presented as humorous skits by The Ethical Arts Players, or with special arrangements, by local volunteers or actors.
- Each program is available in two, three, four, and five hour versions, as well as half-day, full-day and two-day versionsfor retreats and workshops.