Practice and Professionalism LAW 142

Description

This course provides students with foundations in the Model Rules of Professional Conduct with a special focus on the challenges presented by recent developments in the legal industry, which has been transformed by technological innovation and economic pressures to deliver more services for less money across all markets. E-Discovery, electronic communications, and document recognition software are fundamentally altering not only the work that big law firms do but how they price it. Corporate clients are demanding changes to fee structures as the commodification of routine legal documents for smaller, less complicated transactions, is allowing non-lawyers to perform many of the services traditionally performed by lawyers. Attorneys serving the market for personal legal services and small businesses must provide and explain the unique value that they can provide as lawyers. Meanwhile, legal services agencies serving low-income people are using technology to increase the number of clients served. These technological innovations and the ways in which they affect the practice of law and the pricing of legal services inevitably affect lawyers' ethical obligations, particularly with regard to marketing, confidentiality and conflicts of interest. This course fulfills the general Professional Responsibility graduation requirement. (revised 12/19)

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