Upcoming Law Student Week

This year, as we have done for a few years in the past, Slaw will each day in the coming week host a number of student essays written for Professor Adam Dodek’s first year course in Legal Ethics at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Common Law. As Professor Dodek has said here before:

I have found that our students have great perspectives on these issues because they were so recently members of that ridiculous term that only lawyers use: “lay people”. While law school is certainly a socialization process for the legal profession, law students have not been fully socialized. Many remain (and hopefully will remain) strongly idealistic. They remember their previous professions or occupations or status as simply ordinary non-legal folk and they are less willing to accept the “that’s the way it is” explanation for ethical rules in our profession. Students challenge us in the academy to be better and they also challenge us in the legal profession to do better.

I encourage you to chime in, and in particular to take the trouble to comment on the students’ work. Constructive criticism is important to a lawyer’s development, and thoughtful comments from Slaw’s wide and wise readership will no doubt help to encourage these and other students to pursue the difficult ethical matters they raise.

You’ll have no trouble identifying the papers I’m talking about because they’ll be headed by the banner you see here.

Addendum: as tomorrow is Good Friday, a holiday, there will likely be no or few posts on Slaw. We’ll resume regular publication on Sunday, with our case summaries.