2007 NIFTEP FELLOWS
Cynthia Batt
Temple University Beasley School of Law
1719 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
Phone: 215-204-1162
Fax: 215-204-5423
Email: cynthia.batt@temple.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
My involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism is multi-layered. Since 1992, I have served as Director of Clinical Programs at Temple Law School. Our program consists of 17 external clinics and five in-house clinics. In recent years, we have placed increasing emphasis on the professional and ethical development of our students, using both the practice and classroom components. Second, I teach Interviewing, Counseling, and Negotiation. I teach the lawyering skills in the context of beginning and continuing the attorney-client relationship, incorporating the relevant ethical rules and issues. Third, I also teach the standard required Professional Responsibility course, using a problem-based approach to emphasize the values and interests on which the rules and law are based. Finally, I developed a new clinical course, which has just been approved for Spring, 2008, entitled "Ethics in Practice." Students will be individually placed at various externship sites with a mentor who will assist the student to identify issues of ethics and professional development. The academic component will explore these issues and other global issues which impact the legal profession.
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Reason for applying:
The mission of transforming students into ethical and competent practitioners infuses most of what I do. I believe that students learn ethics best when they understand the dilemmas in context and are truly and personally invested in the process. Thus, I have used a problem-solving approach and tried to incorporate the students' actual experiences where practical. Many of the discussions focus on the divergence between the law, societal values, and individual "moral compass." I am often struck by students' reluctance to examine the moral underpinnings of their own or others' actions and their simultaneous retreat to cognitive analysis. I find the conference theme of "moral decisionmaking and ethical commitment" particularly compelling. As I prepare to teach my new ethics course this spring, I feel I would benefit so much from the opportunity to attend the conference. The chance to explore the conference themes will hone my teaching to the ultimate advantage of my students.
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Mary Lu Bilek
CUNY School of Law
65-21 Main Street
Flushing, NY 11367
Phone: 718.340.4519
Fax: 718.340.4482
Email: bilek@mail.law.cuny.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I have been a faculty member for over 20 years at a law school that was created to provide the education necessary for students to develop the professional skills, values, and habits necessary to be excellent public interest lawyers. Because of our recognition of the centrality of the development of ethical consciousness, ethical reasoning skills, the integration of personal and professional values, and the development of professional habits, we made the bold decision in 1983 to adopt the "pervasive" method for teaching ethics and professionalism. Building on my service as a member of New York City's First Department Disciplinary Committee, as well as my own practice experiences, I have been responsible for the development and delivery of introductory sessions on what it means to be a professional, as well as the sessions that lay the framework for the consideration of the ethical and professionalism dimensions of the students' work both in doctrinal courses and simulations. I have also had significant responsibility for working with other faculty members to design the ethics and professionalism dimensions of simulations.
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Reason for applying:
My interest in both themes derives from my hope to build on work we are currently doing through our Community Lawyering Resource Network (CLRN), through which we provide resources, continuing legal education and support for our graduates who practice as solo or small firm practitioners imbedded in communities (by ethnicity and race, age, geography, etc.) using sliding scale and "low bono" arrangements. Privileged to be at a school that views its responsibility to its graduates, the profession and its graduates' clients past the date of graduation, I have been exposed to the actual ethical and professionalism issues confronting our graduates, as well as to a very contextualized understanding of how issues such as office management, resource scarcity, and high demand affect the contours of ethical dilemmas and the context of moral decision-making. I would like to think more about how to bring this understanding to bear on the shape of the instruction of our current students, as well as to further develop and refine CLEs for our CLRN members. In addition, I'd use the opportunity to consider how to bring the actual problems faced by our CLRN practitioners and our recent graduates in more traditional public interest settings into our simulation curriculum and ways to integrate our graduates into the instructional process of our current students, with the goals of improving our curricular instruction and giving our graduates an opportunity for further development in ethical decision-making through the kind of reflection on their own processes that would be necessary for working with current students. Additionally, I would like to further my understanding of how others approach the complex issues that arise when working with students who do not come from privilege as they begin to reflect on entering a profession of privilege: the dissonance between their cultural heritages and the dominant professional culture, the dissonance between the ethical matrices that dominate their life experience and the ethical matrices that dominate the profession, the dissonance between the students' experience of the justice system and the respect for the system demanded of lawyers as professionals, and the development of a professional persona that integrates both their personal preference about how to relate to clients and a functional framework for dealing with clients who bring their prejudices about the lawyer's race and gender to the relationship. Finally, I am interested in learning how others have dealt with the development of cross-cultural competence as an aspect of professionalism.
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David Chavkin
American University, Washington College of Law
4801 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20016
Phone: 202-274-4168
Fax: 202-274-0659
Email: dchavkin@wcl.american.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I direct the Teaching Ethics Working Group at American University. This group includes all of those teaching ethics and/or concerned about the teaching of ethics at American. In this capacity, I facilitate discussions regarding goals, teaching techniques, textbooks, simulations, exercises, testing, etc. I also teach a section of the required course in legal ethics. This course includes an experiential component.
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Reason for applying:
The topics belonging to Theme One will potentially be useful as we revise our teaching plans for this coming spring. We do not mandate a single way of teaching. However, the Teaching Ethics Working Group has provided us with an opportunity to ask the same questions, even if we do not always reach the same answers.
A. James Elliott
Emory University Law School
Atlanta,ga 30322
Phone: 404-727-1075
Fax: 404-727-5249
Email: jelliott@law.emory.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I have been teaching Legal Profession for 13 years, am a Founding Member of the Georgia Chief Justice's Commission on Professionalism and am a winner of the ABA Gambrell Award.
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Reason for applying:
Any time I can learn more about teaching law students and about CLE for practitioners, I am interested.
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Danny Mark Howell
Sands Anderson Marks & Miller
1497 Chain Bridge Road, Suite 202
McLean VA 22101
Phone: 703-761-0502
Fax: 703-893-8484
Email: dhowell@sandsanderson.com
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
For eight consecutive years I have served as a regular instructor at risk management seminars held at various locations in Virginia sponsored by Minnesota Lawyers Mutual Insurance Company and which provide ethics and risk management instruction to thousands of Virginia lawyers (and provide three hours of ethics credits for Virginia CLE purposes). I have also served as a legal ethics instructor for numerous CLE programs sponsored by the Virginia and District of Columbia bars and by the National Business Institute. I have published articles on ethical issues including an extensive article on the Tripartite Relationship for "Coverage", a publication of the Committee on Insurance Coverage Litigation of the American Bar Association’s Section of Litigation. I have been a guest lecturer on several occasions for law school ethics courses, speaking wither on Tripartite conflict issues or on attorney disqualification.
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Reason for applying:
I certainly would benefit from the interaction with other legal ethics professionals, and I believe I would bring my own real world experience to the programs as a regular part of my practice is representation of attorneys in bar and sanctions proceedings. With eight years of extensive experience teaching legal ethics CLE's, I have some concrete ideas and experience relevant to the topic of practical instruction in a short program format. In addition, with over 17 years' experience defending attorneys in legal malpractice actions, I have a number of thoughts about the moral and practical ethical issues that new attorneys ought to be acquainted with as part of their law school educations, as well as the critical issues they would likely face in the first five years of practice.
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Michael B. Kent, Jr.
John Marshall Law School
1422 West Peachtree Street, NW
Atlanta, GA 30309
Phone: (404) 872-3593 ext. 269
Fax: (404) 872-7546
Email: mkent@johnmarshall.edu
Home Page: www.johnmarshall.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I teach the required Professional Responsibility course at John Marshall Law School, which is a two credit-hour course generally offered in the fall semester of the students’ third year of law school. Thus far, I have relied heavily on teaching the course through problems, both those in the chosen case book and of my own design. I have taken this approach primarily because it seems to provide opportunities not only to discuss the application of the rules of professional responsibility, but also to explore more ethereal concepts such as reputation, morality, character, personal values, and the responsibilities that come with being a self-regulated profession. It is my aim to introduce the students not just to the rules but also to the concept of “principled lawyering.” To that end, I have experimented with other methods of introducing moral concepts, including direct discussions of moral philosophy and having guest speakers from the bench and bar discuss ethics and professionalism in the “real world.” These methods have met with mixed success.
Additionally, I attempt to introduce this idea of principled lawyering in my other courses, primarily the first-year Property course. In discussing the assigned cases, I frequently ask the students to consider whether the parties were well-served by their lawyers. My aim is to focus the students’ attention not only on the technical points of law, but also on the important and pervasive role that lawyers play in our society. In dealing with intent-based claims, I introduce the students to the “Anatomy of a Murder” problem, asking them how they would balance their obligation to explain the law adequately to their clients without coaching the clients about the “right thing” to say. We also work through a problem dealing with client confidentiality and business solicitation.
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Reason for applying:
My primary reason for applying is to share my experiences in teaching ethics and to gain from the wisdom and insight of those with broader experiences. Having just started my second year of full-time law teaching, I know I have much more to learn, and I have found that observing and conversing with more experienced teachers and lawyers has been a great tool so far in my development as a law teacher. I specifically am interested in hearing about different teaching styles and methods to enliven class and to convince the students of the importance of principled lawyering.
In light of the foregoing, I am very interested in both of the themes being offered at the 2007 NIFTEP Workshop. I consider moral decisionmaking and ethical commitment to be extremely important. Too often, professionalism is taught as rules rather than values, yet I find it challenging to balance the two in a two-hour course primarily designed to teach the rules and facilitate preparation for the MPRE. Accordingly, both of the themes speak to my interests and the challenges with which I am confronted as a teacher.
More broadly, I also am interested in developing strategies to foster a culture of ethics throughout the students’ time in law school (and not just in the required ethics course), as well as in their formative years in practice. This goal comports with the mission statement adopted by John Marshall’s faculty, which is “to prepare highly competent and professional lawyers who possess a strong social conscience, continually demonstrate high ethical standards, and are committed to the improvement of the legal system and society.” Building on my experience with guest speakers, one idea I have considered is requiring that students attend professionalism colloquia hosted by the school, in which teachers, practitioners, and judges speak on issues of morality, character, and values in the profession. Another idea is for the school to host an annual ethics and professionalism symposium for practicing attorneys, at which CLE credit could be obtained. I am excited about the opportunity to discuss these issues with others in the ethics field, as well as to receive other ideas about how our school can progress in accomplishing its mission.
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Angela Mae Kupenda
Mississippi College School of Law
151 E. Griffith St.
Jackson, MS 39201
Phone: 601-925-7144
Fax: 601-925-7113
Email: akupenda@mc.edu
Home Page: http://www.law.mc.edu/faculty/profile_kupenda.htm
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I teach professionalism as a part of the law school courses I teach. I’ve taught law classes at Mississippi College School of Law, Notre Dame Law School, Boston College Law School and Franklin Pierce Law School. I believe that a great part of professionalism is in learning to treat others with dignity and respect. A great barrier for many students is race. Students who are not accustomed to relating to others who are different from them need to begin to address their own issues of conscious and unconscious racism before they become legal professionals. So, in my core courses I stress professionalism and address the topics of race that appear in the subjects. See Moving from Fear to Courage, and Replacing Preaching with Reaching, published by the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations, University of Florida Levin College of Law (2006), available http://www.law.ufl.edu/centers/csrrr/curriculum_workshop.shtml
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Reason for applying:
An Educator’s Affirmative and Constitutionally Supported Duty: Promoting Positive Race Speech
Our country and the legal system are morally injured by the laws’ and the citizens’ failure to resolve the country’s long standing racial inequalities. My interests are primarily in your first theme, Development of Moral Decision making and Ethical Commitment During Law School and the First Five Years of Practice. The law students that we train will become practitioners, judges, leaders of this country. We are remiss if we do not address how a lack of understanding of continuing racial inequalities and color blind laws in the midst of a color focused society will affect these officers of the court in dispensing their own brands of justice in the system. Although hate speech and negative racial speech that perpetuates stereotypes are increasingly protected in academic settings, concerned academics seem to be yet inclined to the premise that an educator’s own role in the academic setting is to educate students in a race neutral and unbiased way. Such a proposition urges an unnecessary and a harmful approach. An educator’s self enforced racial silence in the academic marketplace, with its predominance of negative speech about racial minorities, is not a neutral approach, but rather it is an approach that serves as a contributor to continued systems of racial subjugation. I believe that an educator has a choice, even a constitutionally supported and affirmative duty, to promote more positive race speech. Development of moral decision making must then include components of encouraging racial justice. Thus, I am concerned with the duty of legal academics to instill a racial morality in all of our students.
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Carol A. Needham
Saint Louis University
School of Law
3700 Lindell Blvd.
St. Louis MO 63108
Phone: 314-977-7104
Fax: 314-977-3332
Email: needhamc@slu.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
For the past 15 years I have taught Professional Responsibility, among other courses, at Saint Louis University, where I am now a full professor. I have also taught a seminar on Business Law and Ethics here. In 2006 I was Chair of the AALS Section on Professional Responsibility, and I remain involved in the Executive Committee of the Section. I have been a member of the Missouri Bar Professionalism Committee and have participated in programs designed to enhance professionalism as well as to convey legal ethics material. Roy Simon, Burnele Powell and I are co-authoring the fourth edition of Lawyers and the Legal Profession (Lexis-Nexis Pub.), which we anticipate will be in print in 2008.
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Reason for applying:
The themes for this year's workshop involve topics in which I have an abiding interest. I would welcome the opportunity to hear what others have to say and to share my perspective.
Regarding Theme One: During law school we can expose students to the real-life situations which confront practicing attorneys so that students can see ethical decisionmaking in context as a way to develop ethical commitment. But enhancing junior lawyers' ability to use independent professional judgment can be difficult when they (correctly or not) perceive an organizational culture in their firm or practice group in which dissent is interpreted as disloyalty. Using books such as Lawyers Crossing Lines by James Kelley and Legal Ethics: Law Stories edited by Rhode & Luban along with video clips does help students to think about the application of the standards we study. But, we can do more to enhance the likelihood that new lawyers will find reliable mentors outside their practice settings. I'd like to hear whether reviving participation in the American Inns of Court, Phi Delta Phi or similar organizations has enhanced the network of ethics-minded practitioners in other areas of the country.
Sustaining the ability to have candid conversations among lawyers of different senority levels is an important component of the formation process for young professionals. We have used several different formats for our Deline Ethics program at my school over the past ten years, including: small groups of first-year students; a daytime presentation co-sponsored by the Missouri Bar for third-years and a combined lecture and discussion evening for third-year law students. I've considered convening a book discussion group for seasoned practitioners but the scheduling obstacles are formidable.
Regarding Theme Two: Over the past fifteen years, I have participated planning and executing dozens of hours of CLE presentations, both sponsored by organizations such as the Association of Corporate Counsel, the AFL-CIO Lawyers Coordinating Committee, the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility and by individual law firms and corporate in-house legal departments. Cogent presentation of usable information is obviously crucial, but there are a variety of ways to determine which issues to focus on, to elicit engagement with the material and to increase the likelihood that participants will see their time as well-spent.
Convening a CLE where attendance is limited to attorneys in a single law firm or in-house legal department is valuable. Tailoring the discussion to compliance and risk management issues that lawyers in that entity have found problematic can provide an occasion to openly discuss difficulties and move the members of the organization toward a consensus.
In addition to bringing our research and new data to the discussion, academics can make a unique contribution to the productivity of any CLE program, particularly in exploring topics with disciplinary counsel or judges which lawyers who may later appear before them are understandably reluctant to raise.
I'm also wondering whether academics who have campaigned for adoption of modifications to rules or similar changes have found it difficult to maintain their objectivity in later scholarship.
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Sharisse O'Carroll
2171 N. Vancouver Ave.
Tulsa, OK 74127
Phone: (918) 606-2866
Fax: (918) 599-7997
Email: sloc@cox.net; sharisse-ocarroll@utulsa.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I am the 2007-08 chair of the Tulsa County Bar Association [TCBA] Professionalism Committee and was the 2006 chair of the Oklahoma Bar Association [OBA] Professionalism Committee. I have been recommended to chair the OBA Professionalism Committee in 2008. I have recently completed a term on the Oklahoma Professional Responsibility Tribunal and am serving a three year term on the nine member Legal Ethics Advisory Panel which writes the Legal Ethics Opinions for the State of Oklahoma. I hope to be involved with the 2008 Ethics Committee for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. I have taught Professional Responsibility for the past fourteen years at the University of Tulsa College of Law and am qualified as an expert on legal ethics in state and federal court (see attached bio and resume). I am the keynote speaker on Professionalism for the Oklahoma Judiciary Winter Conference. I am the recipient of the 2006 National Award for Innovation and Excellence in Teaching Professionalism.
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Reason for applying:
I believe the two themes of the workshop this year are interrelated. I am interested in attending this workshop because I would like to learn how the bar association can better assist newly-admitted lawyers in moral decision-making and ethical commitment. I believe the habits developed in the first five years of practice set the pattern for the entire legal career. Thus it is crucial that newly-admitted lawyers have proper guidance, role models and training. At a recent Professionalism Consortium meeting, it was suggested that regardless of what is taught in law school, new lawyers follow the example set by the judges and older more experienced lawyers. An example was provided that if changes are needed in a corporation, you don’t go to the lowest, most recently hired employees to effect a change; rather, you go to the top executives. The analogy with law practice is that experienced judges and lawyers must remember, understand, and display a commitment to ethical and professional behavior in order to influence and encourage similar conduct in new lawyers. Under my direction, the TCBA Professionalism Committee hopes to implement an experimental concept that would encourage the Tulsa County Judges to order attorneys who exhibit unprofessional behavior to attend mentoring sessions with members of the committee. Furthermore, the OBA Professionalism Committee is interested in developing professionalism training for a one year trial voluntary mentoring program recently adopted in Oklahoma which matches a mentor with a protege. Finally, the Professionalism Committee would like to develop a one hour CLE seminar on professionalism that can be marketed throughout the state; a traveling CLE show that would be presented in every county. Accordingly, I need to learn how to design a one hour CLE session that makes a difference. As for my contribution to the workshop, by the time of the workshop I will have already presented my one hour judicial seminar on professionalism, so I will be able to share with the workshop attendees my strategies, discuss what worked and didn’t work, and provide some insights regarding the judiciary’s response.
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Katharine Traylor Schaffzin
University of North Dakota School of Law
215 Centennial Drive, Stop 9003
Faculty Offices, Room 201
Grand Forks, ND 58202-9003
Phone: 701-777-0588
Fax: 701-777-6033
Email: kate.schaffzin@law.und.edu
Home Page: www.law.und.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
Since 2006, I have been teaching Professional Responsibility to law students, first as a Freedman Fellow at Temple University Beasley School of Law and currently as Assistant Professor at the University of North Dakota School of Law. Because Professional Responsibility is a required course at both institutions, I provide the most significant experience in this area that my students will encounter in their law school careers. Additionally, I have incorporated the subject of professional responsibility into my Evidence and Trial Advocacy courses, as well as into the lessons I teach outside a traditional law school setting in my role as coach to the University of North Dakota School of Law Trial Team and advisor to the North Dakota Student Trial Lawyers Association. Because issues of professional responsibility frequently arise in trial settings, the materials for these courses provide me with ample additional opportunity to further my students’ educations in this area. Finally, I have presented a free continuing legal education ethics seminar for the State Bar Association of North Dakota entitled, “The Disciplinary Process, Trust Accounts & Recent North Dakota Disciplinary Cases.”
In addition to my experience teaching Professional Responsibility, I have devoted a great deal of scholarly research to the subject, culminating in two law review articles in this area. I recently submitted an article solicited by invitation of the North Dakota Law Review, “Deference to a Hearing Panel?: Emerging Trends in the Disciplinary Decisions of the Supreme Court of North Dakota (2004-2007). This article studies each disciplinary case to come before the North Dakota Supreme Court to conclude that certain responses to the recommendation of the disciplinary board’s hearing panel result in more predictable results from the Supreme Court. Additionally, I recently completed an article titled, “Eyes Wide Shut: Ignorance of the Implications of the Common Interest Doctrine Prevents Clients from Rendering Informed Consent.” In this article, I identify the ethical implications of the common interest doctrine on an attorney’s relationship with his or her client. I conclude that failure to adequately explain to the client the risks to the attorney-client relationship can render void the informed consent to waive the client’s rights prior to entering into a common interest arrangement.
My latest research also examines professional responsibility issues. The focus of this research is the identification of a correlation between a state supreme court’s record of accepting the recommendations of its disciplinary board and the procedure by which that Supreme Court appoints members to that disciplinary board. I hope to discover a pattern which may identify one method of appointment as more effective than others.
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Reason for applying:
The Fall Program of the National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism will help me to significantly improve my Professional Responsibility class, as well as the continuing legal education seminars I feel obligated to offer to benefit the very small State Bar Association of North Dakota. I am relatively new to the profession of law teaching. I have taught Professional Responsibility twice to two immensely different student bodies in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Grand Forks, North Dakota. Having accomplished my initial course preparation and revising it once before teaching the course a second time, I feel that I have gained some perspective in gauging what has failed in my prior classes and which subjects should be addressed by an approach different than that which I have used in the past. I am now in a position to restructure my course and individual lessons to improve upon the class. It is my hope that, at the Fall Program, I will be able to engage in significant dialogue with others on the subject of how to improve my class.
At the University of North Dakota School of Law, our faculty is struggling with the first topic of the Fall Program: developing moral decisionmaking and ethical commitment in our law students. Having come from practice in Philadelphia, where the “Philadelphia Lawyer” demonstrates a strong commitment to pro bono and public service, as well as professionalism, I was surprised to discover a seemingly apathetic Bar in North Dakota where pro bono issues and public service often take a back seat to other concerns. Our students at UND feel that and learn from their employers to repeat this behavior. We are currently struggling to inspire our students to practice moral decisionmaking while still in law school, so that they can carry forth their good habits into practice.
As a law professor in the only law school in the State of North Dakota, there exists a great deal of pressure to present continuing legal education ethics seminars for the State Bar Association of North Dakota. Because the Bar is so small, it would not be unusual for me to frequently have the same attorneys enroll in my CLE from one season to the next. The second topic of the Fall Program will be invaluable to me as I struggle to reinvent the ethics CLE a few times a year for the same audience.
Although I am rather junior in this field, I am excited to both receive valuable experiential information from others at the Fall Program and to provide the perspective of a relative newcomer to the field with just enough experience to appreciate and contribute to the discussion.
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Mitchell M. Simon
Pierce Law
2 White St.
Concord, NH 03301
Phone: (603) 228-1541
Fax: (603) 223-6805
Email: msimon@piercelaw.edu
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
I have been teaching a course on Professional Responsibility at Pierce Law for almost fifteen years. I am also a frequent speaker at CLE sessions in northern New England.
I think I bring a unique perspective since in addition to being a law professor, I have been Chair of NH's Ethics Committee and am Of Counsel to a law firm's legal ethics practice group. I am thus able through my work with lawyers to keep current on many emerging issues and to understand both the perspectives of the practicing bar and those of us in academia.
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Reason for applying:
I have long admired the groups that are involved in this conference and would like the opportunity to meet more individuals who share my interests.
Also, as a frequent speaker on legal ethics to various groups and a professional academic, I have given a good deal of thought on how one can best reach an audience often filled with lawyers seeking only to fulfill mandatory CLE hours. I have designed a number of session that use more active learning techniques and sessions that have drawn lawyers to the debate about core ethical issues, questions many had not otherwise approached since law school.
I will confess that I have also tried these techniques, failed with a specific group and fallen back to sessions with more modest goals. But I think both these outcomes will be useful in small group discussions.
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William A. Wright
Sherman & Howard L.L.C.
633 Seventeenth St., Suite 3000
Denver, CO 80202
Phone: 303 299 8086
Fax: 303 298-0940
Email: wwright@shermanhoward.com
Home Page: www.shermanhoward.com
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
Before attending law school, I received a Ph.D. in Philosophy and taught ethical theory, applied ethics and professional ethics as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Louisiana State University and as visiting faculty at North Carolina State University and the Center for Applied and Professional Ethics at California State University - Chico. As a practising attorney, I have been teaching CLE-qualified legal ethics classes, focusing on issues that arise in employment law. In addition, I assist the firm's General Counsel and participate in the firm's training program for summer associates and new associates.
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Reason for applying:
I am eager to share my ideas and receive fresh ideas on how to provide a meaningful class on ethics in the one hour provided in most programs. Many programs fall back on the use of apparent dilemmas to illustrate both the logical consequences and the limitations of the principles in the code. I try to avoid dilemmas in favor of developing basic ethical concepts through discussion, but frequently run out of time in class.
In addition, I would like to develop a curriculum for teaching ethics and professionalism to the firm's new associates. Sherman & Howard has approximately 140 attorneys in Colorado, Nevada and Arizona. My partners and I take pride in the firm and believe that it has the highest possible professional standards. I would like to develop materials to pass that legacy on to our new associates.
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Carl J. Zahner
Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism
The Florida Bar
651 East Jefferson St
Tallahassee, Fla 32399-2300
Phone: 850-561-5747
Fax: 850-561-5750
Email: czahner@flabar.org
Home Page: http://www.floridabar.org/tfb/TFBProfess.nsf/5D2A2
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Brief description of your involvement in the teaching of ethics and professionalism:
As the Director of the Center I develop and teach workshops for practicing lawyers in the following contexts:
Discipline ( Diversion from punitive discipline)
Diversity ( Training lawyers and judges on Diversity issues)
CLE Credit ( Teach professionalism , ethics and leadership for CLE Credit)
In addition I manage the Center which is a source of information and training in all issues relating to professionalism and instruction. I teach lawyers to make presentations on Professionalism and Diversity as a way of more efficiently using the resources of the Florida Bar.
I am staff to both the Florida Bar Standing Committee on Professionalism as well as to the Supreme Court Commission on Professionalism and accordingly report to both the Bar and the Supreme Court of the State.
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Reason for applying:
Having been at the Center for professionalism three years and conducting many
workshops, seminars and other enterprises focused upon the issue of professionalism I
have come to believe that the current focus upon teaching these subjects will be a
failure absent a change in the environment in which lawyers are taught their profession
and where they practice. My experience as a family therapist has taught me that
environmental contextual changes can do more to re-mold behavior than many years of
therapy. As a result while working with Mr. John Berry at the Fla Bar and Justice
Cantero (of the Florida Supreme Court) we have collectively concluded that the Center
for Professionalism and the Commission on Professionalism must reorient the
professionalism efforts in Florida toward such an environmental transformation.
Together with my staff and Mr. Berry we have developed a series of proposals
concerning legal education and a revised set of programs for the Center which relate to
legal education and the early years of practice where career long habits are formed.
These include for example "outreach" to the law schools from the Center and the
Commission to help make professionalism principles an integrated part of the
curriculum, instruction on law office management, development of behavioral
awareness skills in lawyers and other programs designed to affect the character and
development of law students and lawyers alike.
These ideas and proposed programs could benefit greatly from the vetting which they
would receive at the NIFTEP meeting and also might provide information to others
attending about ways in which Professionalism and Ethics might be improved / changed
in other states and other academic settings. Having worked extensively on this
transformation of the Center's working focus and the Commission's new direction -- new
perspectives would be very helpful and might also add to the richness of the meeting
itself.