Get on top of legal ethics.

The challenge

Where students get stuck

The common difficulty is reasoning from a sense of the right answer without grounding it in a rule or authority. This leads students to overlook the duty to the court, which is paramount, and the duties to the client, including confidentiality and privilege, conflicts of interest both concurrent and successive, and the candour and trust account obligations. Where duties conflict, students often fail to resolve the conflict and simply prefer the sympathetic outcome.

How I help

We ground each answer in a rule: identify the duty in issue, state its source, apply it to the facts, and resolve any conflict by reference to the hierarchy of duties, with the duty to the court first. We give particular attention to privilege, conflicts and confidentiality, and work through past problems so the answers are precise and address the more difficult cases.

The method

One method, every problem

Four steps run every argument: name the issue, state the rule, apply it to the facts, conclude. Almost every legal rule takes one of six shapes. Any of these six shapes may carry a twist. Learn the six shapes and the twist →

Related subjects: Disputes, Criminal Law & Procedure, Evidence & Proof. See all subjects, or read the publication on practice hypotheticals.