International Legal Ethics Conference VII (ILEC)

I’m happy to report that we will have two panel discussions dedicated to Behavioral Legal Ethics at the upcoming ILEC VII Conference at Fordham Law School in New York City, July 14-16, 2016.  For those who may not know, ILEC takes place every two years and is attended by legal ethics scholars, practitioners and researchers from across the globe. This year’s conference, entitled The Ethics & Regulation of Lawyers Worldwide: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, expects to be an exciting mix of discussions on a wide range of topics.

The first panel, “Recent Developments and Future Directions in the Study of Behavioral Legal Ethics,” will feature Professor and Associate Dean Catherine Gage O’Grady, University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law; Professor Jane Moriarty, Duquesne University School of Law; and Professor (and BLE co-founder) Molly Wilson, PhD, St. Louis University School of Law. Professor and Associate Dean Alice Woolley from the University of Calgary School of Law will moderate.  Here is the description:

This will explore recent developments and future directions in the study of behavioral legal ethics and its application to the professional practice of law. Panelists will discuss how unconscious biases, self-deception, and situational dynamics impact lawyers’ ethical decision making, behavior, and professional identity. In addition, the panel will explore the unique ways that behavioral legal ethics principles impact new lawyers, examine the way ethical cultures and infrastructures differ between different legal practice settings and different jurisdictions, and suggest how insights from behavioral science can be harnessed to promote ethical professionalism in a wide variety of practice settings.

The second panel, “Experiential Approaches to Teaching Behavioral Legal Ethics,” will feature Professor Vivien Holmes, Australian National University College of Law; Professor (and BLE co-founder) James Milles, University of Buffalo School of Law; and me. Professor Julian Webb from University of Melbourne Law School will moderate. Here is the description:

This panel will focus on experiential approaches to teaching behavioral legal ethics. These include simulation exercises that place students in role where situational influences that affect behavior can be explored and the use of multimedia and online resources to engage students in the foundations of behavioral science. In keeping with this approach, the panel will not only report on the latest empirical and educational research, but will involve audience members in interactive exercises so as to illuminate core findings of behavioral research.

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An election detour . . .

In this heated election season, let’s all remember the power of confirmation bias.  Thank you Calvin and Hobbes:

Teaching Behavioral Legal Ethics

I just posted the draft of my article, Insights from Psychology: Teaching Behavioral Legal Ethics as a Core Element of Professional Responsibility, ___ Mich. St. L. Rev. ___ (2016) (forthcoming). In it, I describe how I incorporate lessons from behavioral science into the survey course I teach on professional responsibility. I have discussed some of these techniques before (for example, here, here and here), but this article explores these themes and ideas in much more detail.

Here is the abstract:

The field of behavioral legal ethics — which draws on a large body of empirical research to explore how subtle and often unconscious psychological factors influence ethical decision-making by lawyers — has gained significant attention recently, including by many scholars who have called for a pedagogy that incorporates behavioral lessons into the professional responsibility curriculum. This article provides one of the first comprehensive accounts of how law teachers can meet this challenge. Based on an approach that employs a variety of experiential techniques to immerse students in the contextual and emotional aspects of legal practice, it provides a detailed model of how to teach legal ethics from a behavioral perspective. Reflections on the approach, including the encouraging response expressed by students to this interdisciplinary method of instruction, are also discussed.