ETHICS CURRICULUM
Kathleen Clark
Washington University Law School

To avoid the “Conscript Syndrome,” we offer a variety of ethics courses, any one of which will satisfy our ethics requirement.

Courses:

Ethics of Lawyering in Government
This course is taught in Washington D.C. in conjunction with our Congressional and Administrative Law Clinic, and covers the ethics of policy making, ethics regulations that are applicable to all government officials, the law governing lawyer conduct, and the professional and other rules specific to government lawyers and lobbyists.

Law and Social Work
This is the core course for the law and social work joint degree candidates. It highlights the different ethical requirements for the two professions, examines the justification for the distinct approaches of each, and offers students opportunities to work together in simulations and community placements.

Law, Medicine, and Ethics
This course compares the professional ethics models for law and medicine, including the differing duties of confidentiality, issues of consent and professional competence.

Lawyers and Ethics in Film and Law
In this course, students study legal ethics through traditional materials as well as through the representation of lawyers in popular culture. The films include: Rashomon, To Kill a Mockingbird, Twelve Angry Men, The Paradine Case, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Verdict, The Music Box, . . . And Justice for All, Anatomy of a Murder, Philadelphia, The Shooting of Big Man, the Sweet Hereafter, and The Thin Blue Line.

Legal Ethics Writing Seminar
Students in this course have the opportunity to explore legal ethics issues in-depth by writing a research paper on an ethics-related topic.

Legal Profession
This course explores the legal, moral and other responsibilities of the practicing attorney in the adversarial system.

Legal Profession: Heroes and Villains
This course explores the possibility that lawyers become heroes both because of their lawyer role and in spite of it. It is organized around a series of exercises and case studies that illustrate these themes with real and realistic experiences of client interviewing, client counseling, and negotiation.

Litigation Ethics
This course is designed to be a primer on ethical conduct in the courtroom, and examines topics in both the civil and criminal spheres of practice.

Secrecy & Whistleblowing
This course explores the obligations facing persons who possess confidential information in a variety of legal contexts. It examines, among other things, lawyers' secrecy obligations as well as the extent of and limitations on whistleblowing options available to lawyers.