This course provides an overview of the legal and ethical issues related to the practice of law, including those arising from the duties of confidentiality, loyalty, candor, diligence, and zeal. Students focus on the ways in which the law and lawyers balance their competing duties to clients, to society, and to themselves. The course also examines issues around access to justice and lawyers' role in making legal services accessible to all.
The course combines lectures, simulations and discussions, some of which will flow from actual cases students are handling in their work with the Stanford Legal Clinic. Because confidential matters will be discussed, the class is only open to students enrolled concurrently in a clinical course that practices law as part of the Stanford Legal Clinic. This includes all clinical offerings with the exception of the Criminal Prosecution Clinic. (Students in the Criminal Prosecution Clinic do their work through the Santa Clara District Attorney's Office and are privy to confidences they are not permitted to share with students in other clinics – just as students working under the rubric of the Stanford Legal Clinic are not permitted to share confidences with students in the Prosecution Clinic.)