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Center for Legal Ethics and Professionalism
Sample Professionalism Hypothetical
During your first year Civil Procedure course,
your professor keeps using the same two hypotheticals over and
over to stimulate discussion. The class always gets completely
wrapped up in trying to solve the issues raised by these two hypotheticals,
but the professor never gives any clue whether the class is on
the right track. This is frustrating and terrifying to you because
the professor keeps hinting that these, or similar, problems will
be on the exam. Three days before the exam, you receive an e-mail
from a college friend who is attending another law school. Your
friend tells you that your Civil Procedure professor used to teach
at the friend's law school, and that your friend has learned of
a book that contains a contribution by your Professor in which
your Professor discusses his two favorite hypotheticals in depth.
Your library contains this book and you may check it out and keep
it for the rest of the semester. If you do so, it will not be
available to any classmates who learn of its contents.
SYNOPSIS: You are a first-year student with
the opportunity to have the inside track on an exam because, three
days before the exam, you receive an e-mail from a friend at another
law school.
POSSIBLE QUESIONS:
- Would you check
out the book?
- Would you share
the information with any of your classmates? All of them?
- Suppose in his e-mail your friend states
that he has secured for you an old exam and your Professor's
explanation of how the exam should be answered. The friend describes
the exam and, to your surprise, describes the same hypotheticals
the class has been discussing. The friend's message says the
old exam and the Professor's model answer are in the attachment
to the e-mail. Would you open the attachment? What if the information
was in the text of the message-would you read it? Would you
share the information with any of your classmates? All of them?
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