This course surveys the law governing the professional responsibilities of attorneys. The assigned readings focus largely, but not solely, on the conduct and regulation of lawyers engaged in civil litigation, meaning that examples involving civil litigation are often used to illustrate doctrines and analytical points that apply to lawyers of all types. The central themes of the course are: (1) that the regulation of lawyers should be handled intelligently for the purpose of encouraging lawyers to perform better than they likely would, if left to their own devices; (2) that self-interest and private contractual arrangements do a fairly good job of aligning the interests of clients and lawyers, but are less successful in encouraging lawyers or clients to take account of the affects their actions have on third parties; and (3) that many regulations, including those seemingly intended to protect third parties, are poorly designed and have little foundation in empirical studies or economic, political, or moral theory.
Silver, Charles M.