Everything I Wanted to Know About Teaching Law School I Learned From Being a Kindergarten Teacher: Ethics in the Law School Classroom

This article discusses the ethics of teaching law school. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that full-time law teachers, rather than part-time practitioners or judges, held the main responsibility for teaching at many law schools. When this shift began to occur, the field of "law professor" was born, and there arose the need for rules in all areas governing law professors, including ethics. Today, most law professors in the United States are members of both the legal and teaching professions and therefore must comply with the ethical rules of each profession.

However they may be professionally licensed, law faculty members are teachers and, as such, subject to many ethical regulations. These regulations include those promulgated by the institutions at which they teach, as well as the industry-wide standards of the American Association of Law Schools, American Bar Association, and American Association of University Professors. Additionally, law faculty members who are not lawyers, but who are members of other professions, are bound by the ethical rules of their own professional disciplines as well.

This article examines the ethics of teaching law school--the role of the faculty member as classroom teacher and the attendant responsibilities that accompany that formidable task. It will consider traditional sources of guidance for law faculty regarding ethical conduct in teaching as well as some less relied upon standards of ethical teaching. In short, the article argues that law faculty members should adhere to certain ethical standards relating to their particular role as classroom teachers, just as do tens of thousands of teachers at all levels of education across the country.