The National Institute for Teaching Ethics and Professionalism (NIFTEP) is a consortium of centers on ethics and the legal profession at six American law schools and is housed at the Georgia State University College of Law in Atlanta. Since 2005 NIFTEP has been conducting
workshops that bring together leading academics and practitioners involved in teaching legal ethics and promoting professionalism. Webcasts and materials presented at each workshop are available from the NIFTEP website: http://law.gsu.edu/niftep/
The Spring 2010 workshop, entitled New Professionalism Opportunities in a Time of Crisis, responded to the eighteen months prior to the workshop in which a number of changes in the legal profession resulted from the economic crisis including:
reduced employment opportunities for new law school graduates, particularly with large firms;
increased pro bono work, especially by law firm associates who are “loaned” to legal service and public interest organizations or encouraged to do pro bono during a period of deferred or suspended employment; and
increased interest in solo and small firm practice both among those entering the profession and those displaced from large firm practice by layoffs and downsizing.
Topics
The Spring 2010 workshop will focus on how both the profession and law schools can respond to such developments. Workshop presentations will focus on, among other topics:
training of pro bono lawyers on “loan” from private practice;
support of practitioners providing “low bono” legal services to those ineligible for legal aid but unable to afford conventionally priced legal services; and
guidance to lawyers who wish to begin solo or small firm practices, including professionalism challenges and ethical pitfalls likely to arise in such settings.
Friday
4:00 p.m. Opening reception in Lakeside Room
4:15 p.m. Introduction to Workshop
4:45 p.m. Report of the ABA Commission on the Impact of the Profession on the Profession and Legal Needs (Clark Cunningham)
5:45 p.m. Keynote Speaker, Bill Henderson:
New Models of Practice: Past, Present and Future
Henderson PowerPoint presentation
7:00 p.m. Clark Cunningham:
Teaching Demonstration: Identifying Knowledge, Skills and Professional Qualities Needed to Start a Solo Practice
Saturday
9:15 a.m. Participant self-introductions
9:30 a.m. Barbara Glesner Fines
University of Missouri - Kansas City School of Law: Entrepreneurial Lawyering – Solo & Small Firm Practice
10:20 a.m. Charlotte Alexander, Robert Bexley, and Jonathan Call
Georgia State College of Law: Fundamentals of Law Practice
11:20 a.m. Katherine Brokaw
Teaching Demonstration: The Creative Lawyer-- Part 1
11:30 a.m. Clark Cunningham
Pierce Law Center: The “Two Year Bar Exam”
4:00 p.m. Afternoon reception: Nacho Station in Lakeside Room
4:30 p.m. Katherine Brokaw
Teaching Demonstration: The Creative Lawyer-- Part 2
5:00 p.m. Billy King, Barbara Glesner Fines
State Bar Conferences for Solo and Small Firm Practitioners
5:20 p.m. Leslie Levin
Pro Bono in Solo and Small Firms
5:30 p.m. Sylvia Stevens
Oregon’s Modest Means Program (information on Oregon's Program for Persons of Modest Means)
5:45 p.m. Small group meetings
6:30 p.m. Fred RooneyCUNY’s Community Legal Resource Network: How Did It Start, What Are Its Essential Elements, What Does It Cost, Can It Be Replicated?
Sunday
9:00 a.m. Rodney Hastings
CLE Demonstration: “Hanging Out Your Shingle”
9:45 a.m. Maureen Howard, Maureen McDonagh, Chuck Olson, Toby Rothschild
Panel Discussion: Volunteer Lawyers in Public Service Settings
--Information from Maureen McDonagh on Boston's Housing Court Attorney-for-the-Day Program
--Issues to be Considered When Using Volunteer Lawyers in Public Service (Prosecution) Settings prepared by Chuck Olson
-- Projects of the Los Angeles County Bar Access to Justice Committee chaired by Toby Rothschild
10:30 a.m. Small group meetings
11:15 a.m. Clark Cunningham
Workshop review, evaluation, and plans for the future