A Survey of Legal Ethics Education in Law Schools

This book chapter, which was published in 2000, provides an overview of legal ethics education in U.S. law schools. Since 1974, legal ethics instruction has been required in law schools by the major accrediting body for law schools. The methods by which this require­ment has been satisfied vary, but the result is a much richer ethics literature than existed previously and a variety of approaches to the topic. This book chapter begins with an overview of the regulation of U.S. lawyers. The second section discusses the history of the legal ethics course requrirement. This section includes data from surveys published in 1985 and 1994 regarding legal ethics education in U.S. law schools. The third section discusses the growth of interest in legal ethics as a subject matter, including the increase in available casebooks and secondary literature. The fourth section presents information about the variety of approaches used to satisfy the legal ethics education requirement. The appendix following the article is entitled "Selected References" and lists many of the available casebooks, treatises, journals devoted to legal ethics, and selected journal articles.