Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism

Ethics and Professionalism Education for the Bench and Bar

One of the primary missions of the Mercer Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism is outreach to the bench and bar with programs and materials intended to promote ethics and professionalism. The first such program was the Georgia Symposium on Ethics and Professionalism, held March 9-10, 2001, which brought together leaders of the bench, the bar, and the academy to discuss ethical guidelines for lawyers engaged in settlement negotiations. The next major program was a symposium on The Theology of the Practice of Law, at which leading scholars discussed, among other questions, what the practice of law has to offer theology. The Center sponsored a symposium on Lessons From Enron, which was held at the law school on October 17, 2002 in cooperation with the Mercer Law Review and the Eugene Stetson School of Business of Mercer University. The most recent symposium was Judicial Professionalism in a New Era of Judicial Selection, which was held in October, 2004. The Center's Ethics and Experts Project makes available, free of charge, a teacher's manual and videotape devoted to ethical issues that arise in connection with the use of expert witnesses. A new similar project on Ethics and Professionalism in Federal Litigation is now complete. In addition, faculty at Mercer have participated in a number of CLE programs related to issues of ethics and professionalism.