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Professional Responsibility in Focus, Third Edition

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Authors
  • John P. Sahl
  • R. Michael Cassidy
  • Benjamin P. Cooper
  • Margaret C. Tarkington
Series / Focus Casebook Series
BOOKMARK
Book length
700 pages
Publication Date
2025-04-29
Edition
Third Edition
Teaching Materials
NO
Description
Table of contents
Preface

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.

Professional Responsibility in Focus provides a user-friendly, problem-based approach to learning the law governing the legal profession, covering subjects including the attorney-client relationship, competence, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, the lawyer as an advocate, special issues in criminal practice, issues concerning the delivery of legal services in general, access to justice and judicial ethics.

This exceptional casebook offers a comprehensive, updated exposition of the law governing lawyers and judges, incorporating new caselaw and other recent developments. Real-world scenarios throughout the text provide students numerous opportunities for students to apply what they have learned and solidify their understanding of important concepts.

New to the Third Edition:
● Several new cases, recent ABA Advisory Opinions, and other developments --such as the ABA’s amended rule on lawyer withdrawal (Model Rule 1.16) -- in an expanded, practice-oriented text with new and revised footnotes
● Additional Materials on Professional Identity Formation to comply with ABA Standard 303(b)
● Multiple state acceptance of alternative pathways to practice (i.e., apprenticeship)
● Discipline of Rudolph Giuliani for frivolous claims relating to the 2020 election
● Crime Fraud exception to attorney client privilege relating to legal counsel to President Donald J. Trump
● ABA Formal Opinion 510 (methods for gathering information from prospective clients to avoid future conflicts of interest)
● ABA Formal Opinion 494 (conflicts and advertising issues in attorney office sharing arrangements)
● Substantial material added to the first chapter defining and exploring professional identity
● Highlighting regulatory changes in some states that allow for experimentation with multidisciplinary practice and alternative business structures
● Focus on changes in technology (particularly artificial intelligence) that may pose partial solutions to the access to justice gap, while creating new problems and issues in the areas of client confidentiality and billing practices
● Increased attention paid to recent scandals in the fields of judicial ethics and government attorney ethics

Professors and students will benefit from:
● Clear and concise coverage of the attorney-client relationship, competence, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and more
● Key Concepts at the start of each chapter and Chapter Summaries at the end of each chapter facilitate study and review
● Case Previews and Post Case Follow-Ups that frame each case, writing clarifies the rules and aid in student understanding
● An introduction to the legal profession
● Real Life Applications and Applying the Rules exercises challenge students to apply what they have learned to realistic hypothetical scenarios
● Updates to Chapter One, on the moral responsibility of lawyers, that provides context for understanding and situating the Model Rules of Professional Responsibility covered in the chapters that follow.
● 12-chapter organization is easily adapted to two or three-credit courses
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Table of Contents

SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments

PART I: INTRODUCTION TO THE LEGAL PROFESSION
Chapter 1.    The Role and Responsibility of Lawyers
Chapter 2.    The Regulation of the Legal Profession

PART II: THE ATTORNEY-CLIENT RELATIONSHIP   
Chapter 3.     The Attorney-Client Relationship
Chapter 4.     Competence —The Lawyer’s Indispensable Duty
Chapter 5.     Confidentiality, the Attorney-Client Privilege, and Work-Product Immunity
Chapter 6.     Conflicts of Interest

PART III: LAWYER AS ADVOCATE   
Chapter 7. Fairness in Adjudication
Chapter 8. Special Ethical Issues in Criminal Practice

PART IV: DELIVERY OF LEGAL SERVICES AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE   
Chapter 9.    Practicing Law: Issues in Group Lawyering and the Unauthorized Practice of Law
Chapter 10.    Marketing Legal Services
Chapter 11.    Access to Justice and Pro Bono Services

PART V: THE JUDICIARY
Chapter 12. Judicial Ethics

Table of Cases 
Table of Rules 
Index 

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Preface
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About the authors
John P. Sahl
University of Akron School of Law

Jack Sahl is the Inaugural Joseph G. Miller Professor of Law and the Director of the Miller-Becker Center for Professional Responsibility at the University of Akron School of Law where he regularly teaches professional responsibility, evidence, and sports law. Professor Sahl is a frequent international and national speaker on the subject of professional responsibility and serves as a consultant and expert witness in the field. He is the Chair of the Publications Board of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility and a member of the Coordinating Council of the ABA Center for Professional Responsibility. He is a former Chair of the Editorial Board of the ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct and served on the ABA Standing Committee on Professional Discipline. Professor Sahl was also Chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Professional Responsibility Section.

Professor Sahl is a member of the Ohio State Bar Association Ethics Committee and of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association Ethics & Professionalism Committee, where he once served as chair. He was also appointed by the Ohio Supreme Court to serve on the Unauthorized Practice of Law Commission.

Professor Sahl clerked for Chief Judge William Holloway Jr. of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He also served as senior counsel to the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee.

R. Michael Cassidy
Boston College Law School

Professor R. Michael Cassidy teaches and writes in the areas of Criminal Law, Evidence, and Professional Responsibility. He is considered an expert on the subject of prosecutorial ethics and provides training nationally to public sector attorneys on their responsibilities under the Rules of Professional Conduct. Among his many professional and community activities, Professor Cassidy has served on the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission, on the Massachusetts Standing Advisory Committee on the Rules of Professional Conduct, and as an elected member of the American Law Institute. Cassidy was awarded the AALS Professional Responsibility Section "Zacharias Prize" for the best legal ethics article published in 2011.

Benjamin P. Cooper
University of Mississippi School of Law

Ben Cooper is the Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and the Frank Montague, Jr. Professor of Legal Studies and Professionalism at the University of Mississippi School of Law. A member of the faculty since 2007, Professor Cooper teaches Legal Profession, Civil Procedure, and an Advanced Legal Ethics seminar. He writes, speaks, and consults on legal ethics and the law governing lawyers. Professor Cooper’s articles have appeared in a variety of journals, including the Wake Forest Law Review, the Cardozo Law Review, the Cincinnati Law Review, the Baylor Law Review, Legal Ethics, and The Professional Lawyer.

Professor Cooper serves as a member of the Mississippi Bar’s Ethics Committee, the Mississippi Supreme Court Advisory Committee on Rules, and the Executive Committee of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Professional Responsibility. He is also the United States Reporter for the Reports, Comments and Notes Section of the international journal Legal Ethics. In addition, Professor Cooper recently completed his work as Co-Reporter for the ABA Commission on the Future of Legal Services. The Commission’s Final Report can be found here.

Before joining the faculty, Professor Cooper practiced law in both the public and private sector. After graduating from law school, he served as a law clerk for the Honorable Anthony J. Scirica of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Professor Cooper then joined the United States Department of Justice via the Department’s Honor Program and, from 1998-2001, was a Trial Attorney in the Federal Programs Branch of the Civil Division, where he defended the legality of federal statutes and programs. From 2001 until he joined the faculty in 2007, Professor Cooper practiced commercial litigation and higher education law in the private sector, first at Kirkland & Ellis in New York and then at Pepper Hamilton in Philadelphia, and gained admission to the partnership at each firm. Professor Cooper received his B.A. with honors from Amherst College in 1994 and his J.D. with honors from the University of Chicago Law School in 1997, where he was a member of the editorial board of the University of Chicago Law Review.

Margaret C. Tarkington
Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law

Margaret Tarkington is a Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where she teaches Professional Responsibility, Federal Courts, Civil Procedure, and a Constitutional Law Seminar entitled Attorney Regulation and the First Amendment. Her scholarly work addresses the intersection of lawyer regulation, the First Amendment, and the overall administration of justice. She has served as an expert consultant on disciplinary proceedings brought against attorneys for their speech, association, and petitioning, and she just completed Voice of Justice: Reclaiming the First Amendment Rights of Lawyers for Cambridge University Press (forthcoming 2018). Professor Tarkington serves as the 2018 Chair of the AALS Professional Responsibility Section. She was awarded the 2015 Indiana University Trustees’ Teaching Award. Prior to joining the Indiana University McKinney faculty in 2011, Professor Tarkington taught for four years at the J. Reuben Clark Law School, Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, where she received the SBA Award for Professor of the Year for First Year Courses. In 2010-2011, she was a Visiting Associate Professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. She previously practiced law in New York, Indiana, and Utah.
Product Information
Edition
Third Edition
Publication date
2025-04-29
Copyright Year
2025
Pages
700
Connected eBook with Study Center + Hardcover
9798892074940
Connected eBook with Study Center (Digital Only)
9798892074957
Subject
Professional Responsibility
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