730-455 Legal Ethics in Context

Students who have completed 730-112, 730-410, 730-383 or 730-454 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

Legal Method and Reasoning; Principles of Public Law; Torts; Dispute Resolution; Obligations or in each case their equivalents.

NOTE: For Graduate LLB students (three-year program) Torts will be a corequisite. The Obligations prerequsite will be waived.

Legal Ethics in Context is offered from time to time, is taught in intensive mode by visiting scholars and, when offered, serves as an alternative to the usual subject. Legal Ethics 730-454. Please check at the Undergraduate Studies Office for information regarding when Legal Ethics in Context is likely to be offered.

When offered, Legal Ethics in Context will serve as a practical and critical introduction to ethics decision-making for lawyers in the context of a particular practice context such as Criminal Practice, Public Interest Advocacy, Dispute Management, Corporate and Commercial Practice and Government Lawyering. The subject will always cover core material on legal ethics and professional conduct including (a) different moral approaches to legal ethics, focusing on the justifications for and criticisms of the traditional adversarial advocate approach and alternatives to it; (b) the way that lawyers' ethics and conduct are regulated including the co-regulatory disciplinary process, the professional conduct standards that regulate lawyers including those relating to conflicts of interest, confidentiality and duties owed to the court, and the general law of lawyering including obligations in equity, contract and tort as well as procedural obligations litigation and (c) the principles of trust accounting. The core material will be supplemented and contextualised by reference to one particular practice context from the list above (or similar). The practical context studies will vary from year to year and possibly by stream. Students will focus on the ethical and professional conduct issues raised by that particular practice context, and the practical skills necessary for ethical practice in that context,

Ethics Exercise 2000 words 40% (due week 6), and take-home examination 3000 words 60% (to be held over five days in week 10 of semester). In addition, students will be required to complete a 1.5 hour open-book Trust Accounting Examination. This will be marked on a pass/fail basis.

Printed materials will be issued by the Faculty of Law.