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Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned, First Edition

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Authors
  • Bernard A. Burk
  • Veronica J. Finkelstein
  • Nancy B. Rapoport
Series / Aspen Coursebook Series
BOOKMARK
Book length
1136 pages
Publication Date
2021-09-14
Edition
First Edition
Teaching Materials
NO
Description
Table of contents

Buy a new version of this textbook and receive access to the Connected eBook with Study Center on Casebook Connect, including lifetime access to the online ebook with highlight, annotation, and search capabilities. Access also includes practice questions, an outline tool, and other helpful resources. Connected eBooks provide what you need most to be successful in your law school classes.

Many professional responsibility professors struggle to engage students in a required course, one that students wouldn’t otherwise have chosen to take, covering material that simultaneously appears both obvious and intricately technical. Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned addresses those concerns with a fresh look at teaching and learning Professional Responsibility. Instead of containing impenetrable cases typical of most professional responsibility casebooks, which force students and teachers to sort out convoluted facts and incomplete or out-of-date analysis, this book “flips the classroom” by providing detailed explanations of the Model Rules, accompanied by problems for class discussion that require students to explore how the Rules apply in real-world situations—a structure which lends itself easily to both in-person and online courses. The book’s explanations are focused on building statutory interpretation skills, and then bringing these skills to common practice scenarios. Discussion covers all aspects of the law governing lawyers, from professional discipline to civil liability to court sanctions, as well as informal concerns, such as client relations and the business of law practice.

Professors and students will benefit from:

  • A “flipped classroom” structure in which the book provides detailed explanations of the Model Rules, interspersed with problems for class discussion, that are both drawn from practice and illustrate some of the challenges in applying the rules in real-world situations.
  • MPRE-style multiple-choice review questions at the end of each chapter (or after substantial portions of a chapter) addressing the material.
  • An informal, irreverent, down to earth, and conversational style, meant to be accessible, crafted to engage students without understating the seriousness of the subject matter, and to encourage them to put themselves into the “hot seats” that the problems describe.
  • A statutory construction approach to the Model Rules, designed to build text-interpretation skills.
  • A comprehensive treatment of the law regulating lawyers, considering all of the practical hazards that lawyers face, and illustrating the connections between the Model Rules as a basis for professional discipline and the law of torts (fiduciary duty and malpractice), contracts (scope of the attorney-client relationship and engagement agreements), agency (authority), and procedure (sanctions), as well as informal concerns such as client relations and reputational issues.
  • A digital edition that includes links to all necessary statutory materials.

Teaching materials Include:

  • A detailed Teacher’s Manual, including:
    • Suggested syllabi for two-hour and three-hour courses.
    • Detailed analyses of all of the problems, including pedagogical suggestions, to stimulate class discussion.
    • Explanatory answers to the MPRE-style multiple-choice review questions.
    • Suggested PowerPoints for class use.
  • Two online-only chapters (The Government Lawyer; Judicial Ethics).
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Table of Contents (PDF)
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About the authors
Bernard A. Burk

Bernard A. Burk graduated from Yale College in 1980, summa cum laude with distinction in English, and from Stanford Law School in 1983, Nathan Abbott Scholar and Order of the Coif. He was a Note Editor on the Stanford Law Review. Burk clerked for Hon. William W. Schwarzer in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and then spent 25 years at Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin, A Professional Corporation, in San Francisco, 20 of them as a shareholder and director. That firm is now part of Arnold & Porter LLP. He chaired his firm’s ethics function, represented other lawyers and law firms in ethics counseling and claims defense, and also represented a wide range of clients in commercial, intellectual property, and constitutional litigation and media and entertainment industry counseling and transactions. He was named a Best Lawyer in America in Commercial Litigation in 2009 and 2010. Since leaving private practice in 2011, Burk has taught at a number of law schools. His research focuses on legal ethics and professional conduct as well as empirical study of the legal profession and the legal academy. He has served as a consultant and expert witness in multiple engagements involving legal ethics and professional conduct and continues to provide pro bono assistance to legal aid programs on regulatory and ethics questions. He blogs regularly on The Faculty Lounge, www.thefacultylounge.org.

Unlike Prof. Rapoport, he cannot dance to save his life. He can, however, sing at least passably.

Veronica J. Finkelstein
Assistant U.S. Attorney
U.S. Department of Justice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Veronica J. Finkelstein is a 2004 graduate, with honors, of the Emory University School of Law and a 2001 graduate, with dual distinction and dual honors, of the Pennsylvania State University. Finkelstein currently works as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She has served as the Civil Division Training Officer and Paralegal Supervisor for the civil division prior to being selected as Senior Litigation Counsel. As the Department of Justice, Finkelstein serves as primary litigation counsel for the United States. She handles a variety of civil affirmative and defensive matters as well as criminal child exploitation cases. She has also tried numerous civil cases to defense verdicts in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, including in tort, employment law, and medical malpractice cases. She has successfully litigated cases on appeal before the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. In addition to this defensive work, Finkelstein investigates and prosecutes affirmative fraud claims, including qui tam actions. She recently resolved civil allegations relating to two hospitals in Lancaster, Pennsylvania as part of a $260 million settlement arising out of fraudulent billing practices in multiple healthcare institutions across the United States.

Prior to joining the Department of Justice, Finkelstein clerked for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. She also worked as an associate at Duane Morris, LLP and Cohen Seglias Pallas Greenhall & Furman, PC, where she practiced construction law. In private practice, she first or second chaired jury trials, mediated or arbitrated cases, drafted pleadings, prepared witnesses, and engaged in deposition practice. She previously worked for the United States Department of Labor as a Pension and Welfare Benefits Advisor in its Atlanta Regional Office and for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as a legal intern.

She has taught at the National Advocacy Center on ethics, appellate advocacy, legal writing, and trial practice. In 2014, she was awarded the Executive Office of United States Attorneys Director’s Award for Superior Performance as a Civil Assistant United States Attorney. In 2019, she was awarded the United States Department of Health and Human Services Offices of the Inspector General Cooperative Achievement Award. She frequently serves as a program director for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. Finkelstein also serves as adjunct faculty of law at Drexel Law, Emory Law, and Rutgers Law. She teaches a variety of courses including evidence, pretrial advocacy, trial advocacy, appellate advocacy, criminal law, and professional responsibility. She is the co-author of the Professional Responsibility textbook “Ethical Lawyering: A Guide for the Well-Intentioned” and has published a book chapter, several scholarly articles, and two moot court problems. She was awarded the Carl “Tobey” Oxholm III Outstanding Contribution to the Thomas R. Kline School of Law Community Award in 2021 and has been named Rutgers Law School Adjunct Professor of the Year from 2007 to the present.

Nancy B. Rapoport
Professor
William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Nancy B. Rapoport is the Garman Turner Gordon Professor of Law at the William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and an Affiliate Professor of Business Law and Ethics in the Lee Business School at UNLV. After receiving her B.A., summa cum laude, from Rice University in 1982 and her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1985, she clerked for the Honorable Joseph T. Sneed III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and then practiced law (primarily bankruptcy law) with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco from 1986-1991.

She started her academic career at The Ohio State University College of Law in 1991, moving from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure in 1995 to Associate Dean for Student Affairs (1996) and Professor (1998). She left Ohio State to become Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Nebraska College of Law, where she served as Dean from 1998-2000. She then served as Dean and Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center from July 2000-May 2006 and as Professor of Law from June 2006-June 2007, before joining the faculty at Boyd. She served as Interim Dean of Boyd from 2012-2013, as Senior Advisor to the President of UNLV from 2014-2015, as Acting Executive Vice President & Provost from 2015-2016, as Acting Senior Vice President for Finance and Business (for July and August 2017), and as Special Counsel to the President from May 2016-June 2018.

Her specialties are bankruptcy ethics, ethics in governance, law firm behavior, and the depiction of lawyers in popular culture. Among her published works are Corporate Scandals and Their Implications 3rd Edition (Nancy B. Rapoport and Jeffrey D. Van Niel, eds., West Academic 2018), which addresses why we never seem to learn from corporate scandals, Law School Survival Manual: From LSAT to Bar Exam, co-authored with Jeffrey D. Van Niel (Aspen Publishing 2010), and Law Firm Job Survival Manual: From First Interview to Partnership, also co-authored with Jeffrey D. Van Niel (Aspen Publishing 2014).

She is admitted to the bars of California, Ohio, Nebraska, Texas, Nevada, and the United States Supreme Court. In 2001, she was elected to the American Law Institute, and in 2002, she received a Distinguished Alumna Award from Rice University. In 2017, she was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi (Chapter 100). She is the Secretary of the Board of Directors of the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement (the Mob Museum) and a Trustee of Claremont Graduate University. She is also a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy.

In 2009, the Association of Media and Entertainment Counsel presented her with the Public Service Counsel Award at the 4th Annual Counsel of the Year Awards. In 2017, she received the Commercial Law League of America’s Lawrence P. King Award for Excellence in Bankruptcy, and in 2018, she was one of the recipients of the NAACP Legacy Builder Awards (Las Vegas Branch #1111). She has served as the fee examiner or chair of the fee review committee in large bankruptcy cases such as Zetta Jet, Toys R Us, Caesars, Station Casinos, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Mirant.

She also appeared in the Academy Award®-nominated movie Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Magnolia Pictures 2005) as herself. Despite being listed in IMDb, she has not yet been able to join the Screen Actors Guild. In her spare time, she competes pro-am in American Rhythm and American Smooth ballroom dancing. In 2014, she won the national U.S. Open ProAm Rising Star American Smooth Competition B Division, and in 2017, she came in 2nd in the “C” Open to the World ProAm American Style 9-Dance Championship. The most interesting thing about her is that she is married to a former Marine Scout-Sniper. The best way to reach her is by calling her on her cell phone.
Product Information
Edition
First Edition
Publication date
2021-09-14
Copyright Year
2021
Pages
1136
Connected eBook with Study Center + Paperback
9781454861553
Connected eBook with Study Center (Digital Only)
9781543835281
Subject
Professional Responsibility
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