Legal Ethics

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2008:

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 prerequisite will be waived.

Students who have completed, 730-410, 730-383 or 730-455 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Legal Ethics is a practical and critical introduction to ethical decision-making for lawyers. The subject has two main components. Firstly, it introduces different moral approaches to legal ethics, focusing on the justifications for and criticisms of the traditional adversarial advocate approach and alternatives to it. Students will be expected to be able to apply the different moral approaches to fact scenarios and to be able to articulate and explain which approach/es they find most convincing for each scenario and why. ­Secondly, the course examines 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 in litigation. Students will be expected to be able to identify and resolve ethical issues that arise in legal practice using the professional conduct rules and law of lawyering. Students will also be expected to be able to critically assess the way lawyers' ethics are regulated by these rules against different moral approaches to legal ethics. Finally, the principles of trust accounting are taught and assessed as part of this course.

• Ethics Exercise. 1500 words. Worth 30%. Due Week 6 of semester.

• Assignment. 3500 words. Worth 70%. Due Week 12 of semester.

• Trust Accounting Examination: online, open book. Marked on a pass/fail basis as a hurdle requirement. Time allowed: 2 hours.

• Christine Parker and Adrian Evans, Inside Lawyers' Ethics (2007)

• Printed materials to be purchased from the Faculty of Law

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.

On completion of the subject students should have developed the following generic skills:

• evaluation and synthesis of competing theories, rationales and ideas to resolve practical problems
• openness to new ideas and critiques of received wisdom;
• an ability and self-confidence to comprehend complex concepts, to express them lucidly, whether orally or in writing, and to confront unfamiliar problems
• capacity to engage in constructive professional and public discourse, to accept professional, social and civic responsibilities and to speak out against prejudice, injustice and the abuse of power

Students who have completed 730-112, 730-410, 730-383 or 730-455 are not eligible to enrol in this subject.