LEGAL ETHICS IN LEGAL EDUCATION: A REVIEW AND CRITIQUE OF ANGLO‐AMERICAN APPROACHES AND METHODS

Abstract

Legal ethics are the values that inform the practice of law. This article establishes what and how Anglo‐American law schools teach about legal ethics and suggests what and how Anglo‐American law schools should teach about legal ethics. First, the article establishes that law schools in Australia and the rest of the Anglo‐American world tend to teach legal ethics as if it were only concerned with the law of lawyering. It also establishes that Anglo‐American law schools tend to teach legal ethics discretely over the course of one subject out of the whole undergraduate curriculum. Secondly, the article suggests the adoption of a new approach to legal ethics as the ability to exercise legal ethical judgment. It also suggests a pervasive method of instruction that integrates issues of legal ethics and the process of legal ethical judgment into every subject in the undergraduate curriculum in combination with discrete subjects on the context and substance of the law of lawyering.