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Saturday Schedule
Program
Annual
Meeting
Home
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Saturday, January 4, 2003
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8:30-10:15 a.m.
Section on Professional Responsibility
Robert F. Cochran, Jr., Pepperdine University, Chair
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Virginia Suite A & B
Marriott Wardman Park Hotel
Lobby Level |
Client Counseling and Moral Responsibility
From Legal Aid to Enron
(Program to be published in the Pepperdine Law Review.)
Moderator:
Robert F. Cochran, Jr., Pepperdine University
Speakers: - Deborah L. Rhode, Stanford Law School
- Thomas L. Shaffer, Notre Dame Law School
- Paul R. Tremblay, Boston College
Many decisions made in the law office are not controlled by the law or the rules of the legal profession. Will the client take legal steps that will harm other people? In a divorce, will the client take actions that will harm his child or spouse? Will the officers of a corporation consider the effects of their actions on workers, on consumers, on the environment? Over recent decades, three schools of thought have emerged among legal ethicists and legal clinicians concerning the lawyer's role when she confronts such issues? This program, possibly for the first time, will bring together leaders of these schools of thought for a conversation. Professor Tremblay is a co-author of the forthcoming new edition of Lawyers as Counselors: A Client-Centered Approach (with David Binder, Paul Bergman, and Susan Price). For the client-centered lawyer, client autonomy is the foremost concern and "decisions should be made on the basis of what choice is most likely to provide a client with maximum satisfaction." Professor Shaffer proposes a collaborative lawyer. He argues, in Lawyers, Clients, and Moral Responsibility (with Robert Cochran), that the lawyer should approach difficult moral decisions in consultation with the client, as a friend would approach a friend, neither imposing her views nor ignoring the difficult issue, but raising it and engaging in moral discourse with the client. Professor Rhode advocates a more directive lawyer, a lawyer who is willing to assert control of moral issues that arise during legal representation. She argues, in her book, In the Interests of Justice, "Lawyers can, and should, act on the basis of their own principled convictions, even when they recognize that others could in good faith hold different views." One of the issues which this panel will discuss is whether the lawyer's counseling role should vary depending on the financial condition and sophistication of the client--should the "moral counsel," if any, be different with a legal aid client than with Enron.
Business Meeting at Program Conclusion
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