The International Forum on Teaching Legal Ethics and Professionalism website is designed as an online gathering place, resource repository, and clearinghouse for an international community of ethics teachers, scholars, and practitioners. The website provides an organizing tool for efforts to change the culture of legal education and to increase the emphasis on ethics and professionalism education across jurisdictions and throughout law schools’ curricula.
Although teaching ethics and promoting the development of professionalism are currently vibrant and important topics in both legal education and the law profession, and though considerable information exists around the world on these topics, such information is typically targeted only to persons within discrete jurisdictions. Most of this information is available only in conventional print formats and the publications where it is found are again generally known and available only within particular jurisdictions. Actual examples of effective and innovative teaching methods are difficult to find and obtain; all too often they are only described in general terms in print-based media. Although there are a number of websites with general information on either legal education or ethics and professionalism, there is no single, comprehensive, internationally-targeted internet portal to access what information does exist. Furthermore, there is no widely accessible website that has useful interactive features and serves as a forum for a global exchange of ideas among ethics teachers, scholars, and practitioners.
The Forum website catalyzes innovative teaching, especially by increasing the flow of information across national boundaries, and empowers both practitioners and law teachers (particularly those in institutions with limited resources) to participate in a global dialog among persons dedicated to the effective teaching of legal ethics and professionalism. Specifically, the website:
• Consolidates and makes easily available a wide range of materials, in both text and multi-media formats, on the teaching of legal ethics and professionalism, and organizes these materials into a comprehensive, fully searchable bibliography;
• Allows registered users to create their own web pages, upload both scholarship and teaching materials to the bibliography, download a wide variety of materials created by others (including podcasts, webcasts, and other audio-visual material), and post comments on their use of such material; and
• Provides a forum for original commentary and exchange of ideas for both teachers and practitioners on teaching ethics and promoting professionalism.
The United Kingdom Centre for Legal Education (UKCLE), the International Bar Association (IBA), and the Burge Endowment for Law & Ethics at Georgia State University (GSU) College of Law have provided financial support for the development of the Forum Website. The National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism (NIFTEP), housed at the GSU College of Law, currently administers this website. The website administrator can be contacted at:
admin@teachinglegalethics.org