The Law Teacher

ISSN: 0306-9400 (Print) 1943-0353 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ralt20

Educating towards ethical lawyers: a progress

report

Clare Sandford-Couch & Jonathan Bainbridge

To cite this article: Clare Sandford-Couch & Jonathan Bainbridge (2015) Educating
towards ethical lawyers: a progress report, The Law Teacher, 49:3, 336-352, DOI:
10.1080/03069400.2015.1016727

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 The Law Teacher, 2015
Vol. 49, No. 3, 336–352, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03069400.2015.1016727

Educating towards ethical lawyers: a progress report

Clare Sandford-Couch* and Jonathan Bainbridge

Law School, Faculty of Business and Law, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon
Tyne NE1 8ST, UK

In 2010 in a conference paper on legal education and ethics, we

addressed the proposition that exempting degrees offer a unique
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opportunity to inculcate students with the importance of ethical con-

siderations throughout their legal education, incorporating such con-
siderations in an integrated academic and vocational context. The
paper included a detailed analysis of the practicalities of incorporating
professional legal ethics into the undergraduate exempting law degree
at Northumbria University. Since 2010, there has been relatively little
written from a UK perspective on incorporating teaching of legal ethics
at the undergraduate stage. Here we review our progress made
towards achieving that goal. The article reveals that the results have
been limited; we explore the reasons for this, and consider what
alternative course(s) might have been followed. As such, our experi-
ences may offer guidance for those intending to engage with the
Legal Education and Training Review (LETR) recommendations to
incorporate some consideration of ethics into legal education.

Introduction
In 2010 in a conference paper on legal education and ethics, we addressed the
proposition that exempting degrees offer a unique opportunity to inculcate
students with the importance of ethical considerations throughout their legal
education, incorporating such considerations in an integrated academic and
vocational context.1 The paper included our suggestions for incorporating
legal ethics into the undergraduate exempting law degree at Northumbria
University.
The reiteration of the role values and ethics should play in legal education
in the Report of the Legal Education and Training Review (LETR), of June 2013,
encouraged us to revisit the topic of the practicalities of teaching some aspect
of professional legal ethics in the undergraduate exempting law degree at

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

1
Jonathan Bainbridge and Clare Sandford-Couch, “Educating towards Ethical Lawyers?”, Eighth
International Journal of Clinical Legal Education / Clinical Legal Education Conference, July 2010,
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

© 2015 The Association of Law Teachers

 The Law Teacher 337
Northumbria University.2 The passing of four years – and a cohort of students –
would appear to make 2014 an appropriate time to review what progress we
have made.
So, this article first outlines the background to our initial paper, and then
details our proposals in 2010 for incorporating professional legal ethics into an
exempting law degree. After reviewing the progress made in the four-year
period to 2014, the final part of the paper considers whether our experiences
can offer any guidance for those intending to incorporate some consideration
of ethics into legal education.

The situation in 2010

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In 2009, several reports were published which indicated a broad interest in

including some aspect of ethics in legal education.3 At roughly the same
time, the change to the governance of the solicitors’ profession by a
system of outcomes-focused regulation required a significant shift in
practitioners’ thinking.4 The intention behind the new focus on principles
– rather than specific professional conduct rules – seemed to have been to
encourage a more self-reflective, autonomous approach (an “internal alarm
bell”), whereby the practitioner takes responsibility for determining
whether a particular course of action would be compatible with the out-
comes or principled norms that are stated to underpin the profession.
Clearly such an approach places a greater emphasis on the ethical values
of the individual legal practitioner.5 It seemed at this time (and the LETR
Report of 2013 would indicate that this remains the case) that the reg-
ulators envisaged part of the responsibility for encouraging the necessary
ethical awareness would fall on legal educators.

2
Established in 2011, the Review was intended to be the most substantial review of all stages of
legal education and training; it was jointly undertaken by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA),
the Bar Standards Board (BSB) and the Institute of Legal Executives Professional Standards (IPS), and
reported in 2013. The Report, Setting Standards: The Future of Legal Services Education and Training
Regulation in England and Wales. Legal Education and Training Review, is available at http://letr.org.
uk/wp-content/uploads/LETR-Report.pdf (accessed 8 October 2014). LETR is discussed further below.
3
K. Economides and J. Rogers, Preparatory Ethics Training for Future Solicitors (London, Law Society,
2009). Copies of the Economides and Rogers report can be downloaded from the Law
Society website at http://www.lawsociety.org.uk/influencinglaw/policyinresponse/view=article.law?
DOCUMENTID=419357 (accessed 8 October 2014). D. Hunt (Lord Hunt of Wirral), The Hunt Review of
the Regulation of Legal Services (2009), available at https://www.lsc.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/
0016/260035/The-Hunt-Review-of-the-Regulation-of-Legal-Services-NZ-Dec-2009.pdf (accessed 8
October 2014).
4
On outcomes-focused regulation, see www.sra.org.uk (accessed 8 October 2014).
5
On raising lawyers’ ethical awareness, see A. Evans and H. Forgasz, “Framing Lawyers’ Choices:
Factor Analysis of a Psychological Scale to Self-Assess Lawyers’ Ethical Preferences” (2013) 16(1)
Legal Ethics 134–161.
 338 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
The issue of whether, where, and how to address legal ethics was there-
fore an interesting and current one for those involved in legal education in
2010.6 This prompted us to look at the undergraduate exempting law
degree at Northumbria University, upon which we both teach, to see
whether and how we could incorporate some element of ethics. Having
come relatively late into the debate on the ethical content of legal educa-
tion, we in England and Wales have the advantage of being able to draw
upon the experiences of other jurisdictions. The American Bar Association,
for example, first introduced ethics as a compulsory requirement for law
degrees in 1970s and Australia and New Zealand have done much work in
this area.7 We can also draw upon the experiences of other disciplines which
have incorporated an ethical dimension into their training regimes: most
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notably medicine, but also accountancy. Consequently, there are many

examples which could inform a consideration of how and where to include
legal ethics in an undergraduate law degree.
The exempting degree at Northumbria University appeared an interest-
ing case study when considering how to incorporate ethical considerations
into legal education and how to develop an awareness of ethics and
professional values in the lawyers of the future. It offers students the
opportunity to take a four-year exempting degree, which integrates the
academic and vocational stages of training: an exempting degree includes
the requirements of the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) or Legal
Practice Course (LPC) alongside the seven foundation subjects of a qualify-
ing law degree (QLD; that is, a degree which comprises the necessary
elements to meet the requirements of the professional bodies to permit a
student to progress to the next stage of their legal training). In addition,
through its Student Law Office, the exempting degree at Northumbria
incorporates a substantial clinical element. We thought that this could be
significant: if the intention is for legal education to equip the student with
the basic habits for autonomous ethical problem-solving, it is at least ques-
tionable how connected could students at an undergraduate level be with
professional legal ethics. However, a degree incorporating an element of
clinical legal education could potentially make those issues more relevant,
less abstract and more “real”, to students.

6
A useful introduction to the subject is M. Robertson, L. Corbin, K. Tranter and F. Bartlett (eds), The
Ethics Project in Legal Education (London, Routledge, 2011). See also A. Boon, “Ethics in Legal
Education and Training: Four Reports, Three Jurisdictions and a Prospectus” (2002) 5(1) Legal
Ethics 34–67.
7
On Australian legal education, see M.A. Noone and J. Dickson, “Teaching Towards a New
Professionalism: Challenging Law Students to Become Ethical Lawyers” (2001) 4(2) Legal Ethics
127–145. A course in legal ethics is now mandatory for all New Zealand law graduates: see the
New Zealand Council of Legal Education website http://www.nzcle.org.nz/ (accessed 8 October
2014). On ethics in legal education in Canada, see R. Devlin, J. Downie and S. Lane, “Taking
Responsibility: Mandatory Legal Ethics in Canadian Law Schools” (2007) 65(6) The Advocate 761.
 The Law Teacher 339
What “ethics” do we teach?
The questions we sought to address in 2010 were not just whether ethics
should be included in the degree, but also what “type” of ethics we would
teach, and how to teach it. We questioned whether ethics as a subject should
be interpreted broadly, as an academic discipline, or in a narrower professional
context: should we teach pure ethical theory? Or a more applied approach,
focusing on legal ethics? Or, more specifically, professional legal ethics?
This was a pertinent question, as in 2010 it seemed that the debate
proceeded without this ever being conclusively addressed. Indeed, a one-
day conference hosted by UKCLE in association with the Law Society in
May 2010 to discuss legal ethics at the academic stage, attended by
representatives of the Law Society Education and Training Committee,
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the Head of Education and Training Policy at the SRA, and the Head of
Educational Standards at the Bar Standards Board, ended without there
being any clarity that all interested parties were talking about the same
things when referring to “legal ethics”.8

An academic approach
If it is left to individual academic institutions to decide what “ethics” is to mean
to them and their students, some may regard the most appropriate approach
for a liberal arts degree like law is an academic study of ethics in its broadest
sense.9 This may encompass pure ethical theory, moral philosophy, moral
reasoning, or “general system ethics” or virtue ethics (by which we mean
character and judgment-based ethics, to use Julian Webb’s terms).10
To adopt an academic approach necessitates engaging with debates about
what outcomes a law course can and should achieve in this area. On the one
hand, a theoretical grounding in the philosophical issues may appear too broad
for a law degree; however, a broader focus may avoid concerns that, if we
8
“Legal Ethics at the Academic Stage: Exploring the Issues”, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, 10
May 2010. Further detail on the sorts of issues being considered at this stage can be found at the
UKCLE archive, available at http://78.158.56.101/archive/law/resources/ethics/legal-ethics-at-the-aca-
demic-stage-exploring-the-i/index.html (accessed 8 October 2014).
9
On liberal education in the law school, see A. Bradney, Conversations, Choices and Chances: The
Liberal Law School in the Twenty-first Century (Oxford, Hart, 2003), and A. Bradney, “How to Live:
Aristocratic Values, the Liberal Law School and the Modern Lawyer” in F. Cownie and C. Lista (eds)
“One World, Different Cultures, Clashing Values: Legal Education in a Global Context” (2011) 2 Web
Journal of Current Legal Issues, http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk/ (accessed 8 October 2014); R. Collier, “The
Liberal Law School, The Restructured University and the Paradox of Socio-Legal Studies” (2005) 68(3)
Modern Law Review 475. These are issues of long standing: see A. Bradney and F. Cownie,
“Transformative Visions of Legal Education” (1998) 25 Journal of Law and Society 1; and P. Birks
(ed.), Pressing Problems in the Law: What Are Law Schools For? (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996).
10
J. Webb, “Conduct, Ethics and Experience in Vocational Legal Education: Opportunities Missed”, in
K. Economides (ed.), Ethical Challenges to Legal Education and Conduct (Oxford, Hart, 1998), p. 292.
On the relationship between values and liberal legal education, see R. Burridge and J. Webb, “The
Values of Common Law Legal Education: Rethinking Rules, Responsibilities, Relationships and Roles
in the Law School” (2007) 10 Legal Ethics 72.
 340 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
retain the conception of a law degree (even a QLD) as a liberal arts degree, a
narrowly focused course of professional legal ethics may take it too close to
“vocationalism”.

Legal ethics
The focus possibly could be more specifically on legal ethics, the notion of
“legal values”, or the “moral context of law”; yet even this narrower focus can
leave quite a wide scope:

some courses may focus on the “black letter” codes of professional responsibility,
others on the legal and socio-economic structures of the legal professional, others
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on the application of moral philosophy to the work of lawyers, and still others on
the awareness of aspects of human relationships or the development of moral
judgment.11

Professional legal ethics

A QLD could focus on matters of professional legal identity: the role, work and
ethical responsibilities of the legal profession.12 It has been suggested that “the
‘ethics’ in legal ethics is not merely about being a morally good person. It is also
about being a professionally safe lawyer”.13 Concentrating on professional legal
ethics seems more in line with the SRA’s risk-based, outcomes-focused
approach, which was intended to establish a body of clearly articulated stan-
dards of behaviour that can be expected of practitioners.14 So, it may be that
the professions expect legal education to prepare students for a system which
enables and encourages lawyers to acquire skills in both recognising and
resolving ethical dilemmas.15 Whether this is an appropriate role for universities
remains an open question, and, unfortunately, one which we cannot address in
detail here.
Even if some consensus could be reached on what is meant by “legal
ethics”, that would not necessarily settle debate on where and how such a
subject should be included in a QLD. If an ethical component were considered
a compulsory part of the legal syllabus, many university law departments might
11
A. Jones, “Teaching Legal Ethics in Context”, http://78.158.56.101/archive/law/resources/teaching-
and-learning-strategies/teaching/index.html (accessed 8 October 2014).
12
Some of these issues are addressed in P. Baron and L. Corbin, “Thinking Like a Lawyer/Acting Like
a Professional: Communities of Practice as a Means of Challenging Orthodox Legal Education”
(2012) 46(2) Law Teacher 100–119. On this focus in the US, see the Carnegie Report, W.M. Sullivan, A.
Colby, J. Welch Wegner, L. Bond and L.S. Shulman, Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession
of Law, Report for Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (San Francisco, Jossey-
Bass, 2007).
13
S. Gilliers, Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics (Boston, Little Brown, 1995), preface
p. xiii.
14
http://www.sra.org.uk/sra/consultations/OFR-handbook-May.page (accessed 8 October 2014).
15
J. Chapman, “Why Teach Legal Ethics to Undergraduates?” (2002) 5(1–2) Legal Ethics 68–89.
 The Law Teacher 341
well argue that the core is already too large and overly restrictive of academic
freedom. This may be a particular concern if one attempted to accommodate a
broad-based study of ethics. But, is professional legal ethics too narrow a focus
for a QLD? How should universities incorporate into their QLD an ethics
component that addresses the subject in a manner suitable for those intending
to take either professional route? And what of those students who do not
intend to proceed from legal study into practice? Or those who choose to enter
the profession without having studied for a law degree? At a time when
university budgets face considerable pressures, how would law schools react
to the imposition of additions to the QLD, which cannot be resource-neutral?
Many outstanding questions remain, often arising from the ongoing unresolved
tensions over what the professions and the academic institutions require to be
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covered in a QLD.
Clearly, there remain uncertainties regarding ethics in legal education.
These may arise from a lack of clarity in why universities might be encouraged
to include ethics in the undergraduate law degree, and what outcomes any
ethics curriculum would be intended to achieve.16 The problem is that legal
ethics can be taught on a number of levels, and the meaning of legal ethics for
a particular course depends on its nature and objectives.
So, perhaps the better question is: what did we mean by “ethics”? An
exempting law degree might have the potential to bridge the professional/
vocational and academic interest groups, which seemed to us to make a
focus on professional legal ethics most appropriate for our undergraduate
degree programme at Northumbria. Having reached a tentative conclusion
on what we meant by “ethics”, in the context of our degree, we had still to
address the question of how to teach it: should ethics be a stand-alone
module, taught in the context of professional conduct, or should it appear
as a pervasive thread across the whole degree? How could it be contextua-
lised in an exempting degree? Should it be assessed, and, if so, how?

Our proposals in 2010: a year-on-year approach

This next part identifies our plan in 2010, of where ethics could be included in
each year of the undergraduate exempting law degree at Northumbria.
We attempted to evaluate the application of current thinking on what has
been termed the “whole of curriculum” approach to teaching legal ethics.17 We
took the view when drawing up our initial proposals that the integrated nature
of the exempting degree would enable us to feature elements of professional
legal ethics at all levels of the degree. To an extent, professional legal ethics
could pervade the degree. Our intention in the early years would be to focus on
16
For a detailed consideration of what might be included, see A. Boon, Legal Ethics at the Initial
Stage: A Model Curriculum (London, Law Society, 2010).
17
On the “whole of curriculum”, see M. Robertson, “Providing Ethics Learning Opportunities
throughout the Legal Curriculum” (2009) 12 Legal Ethics 59.
 342 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
developing “ethical sensitivity”, an appreciation of the ethical dimension of
becoming a lawyer and joining the legal profession.18 This could then build
across the degree towards the open and practical application of ethical con-
siderations in the clinical element of the degree. This would also allow for the
approach to be tailored to students taking either the barrister’s exempting
degree or the solicitor’s exempting degree. Students generally study the same
modules in years one and two; years three and four then differ, to address the
specific requirements of the BPTC and LPC.

Year one
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In their first year of undergraduate study, as part of their induction programme

students have traditionally received a lecture which introduced concepts of
morals and ethics, and included an analysis of Professor Lon L. Fuller’s Case of
the Speluncean Explorers.19 We concentrated upon how to enhance that basic
platform to include further consideration of some notion of legal ethics.
We identified English Legal System as a suitable vehicle to encourage
students to consider their understandings of the notion of professionalism,
and the role lawyers do and should play in society. As in many other institu-
tions, this is studied in the first semester of the first year. At Northumbria, first
year students are also required to complete a court visit exercise, where
students attend a court of their choosing and produce a report addressing
certain matters. Our intention was that by posing specific questions, students
could be encouraged towards forming an impression of the notion of profes-
sionalism, and how ethical considerations may inform the behaviour of the
legal professionals they witnessed in action. These issues could be discussed
further in English Legal System seminars. This would be set alongside a level of
applied professional legal ethics, as students in year one study an integrated
crime, litigation and evidence module which incorporates professional conduct
considerations. Students could then complete year one with an awareness of
legal professionalism and the broad notion of an ethical code guiding or
informing the actions of legal practitioners.20

18
On the role legal education could play in the formation of professional values and attitudes, see E.
Dagilyte and P. Coe, “Professionalism in Higher Education: Important Not Only for Lawyers” (2014)
48(1) Law Teacher 33–50.
19
L.L. Fuller, “The Case of the Speluncean Explorers” (1949) 62(4) Harvard Law Review 616–645.
20
For a consideration of these issues in the context of an Australian law degree, see D. Henriss-
Anderssen, “Teaching Legal Ethics to First Year Law Students” (2002) 13 Legal Education Review
45–63. See also C.E. Sharp, “‘Represent a Murderer … I’d Never Do That!’ How Students Use Stories
to Link Ethical Development and Identity Construction”, in M. Robertson, L. Corbin, K. Tranter and F.
Bartlett (eds), The Ethics Project in Legal Education (London, Routledge, 2011), pp. 33–51, esp.
pp. 36–45.
 The Law Teacher 343
Year two
In year two, students could again experience a mixture of legal ethical theory
and more practical and applied notions of professional legal ethics. Professional
conduct issues are addressed in the context of another integrated module: tort,
litigation and evidence. This combines the QLD foundation subject of tort with
aspects of litigation and evidence as required for the professional qualifications
(BPTC or LPC). It could offer an opportunity to provide context for the more
theoretical consideration of legal ethics, but (as might be appreciated) this is
already quite a complex and comprehensive module. Year two also uses case
studies, in which students follow a “case” through from interviewing clients
(role-played by tutors), to mediation and advocacy exercises (with a tutor role-
playing a judge). These introduce students to the notion of thinking and
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behaving like a lawyer. We thought that this might provide an opportunity to

incorporate some points to build on the gentle “consciousness-raising”
approach in year one.

Year three
In year three, students studying to become solicitors are taught and assessed in
professional conduct (one of the Legal Practice Course elements of their
degree).21 As part of the professional conduct curriculum, students receive a
series of lectures and workshops which could be expanded to encourage
students to reflect on what they understand by “professionalism” and legal
ethics, for example in relation to a series of hypothetical scenarios. Students
taking the Bar exempting degree (which integrates the undergraduate stage of
legal education with the requirements of the Bar Professional Training Course)
study professional ethics as part of the BPTC requirements.22
In addition, students studying to become solicitors in year three experience
their introduction to clinical legal education in the Student Law Office (SLO),
which provides a seemingly ideal forum to encourage awareness of ethical
issues. It has been argued that the most effective ethical training evoked an
instinctive response, so effective ethical training should cultivate students’
ability on moral reasoning, leading to development of their capacity for auton-
omous decision making.23 Students may be encouraged to evolve the habit of
ethical decision making by considering situations in seminars, but how much
more effective are those lessons likely to be if they arise in an experiential
context?

21
Professional Conduct and Regulation is one of the Stage 1 Outcomes of the Legal Practice Course:
see www.sra.org.uk (accessed 8 October 2014).
22
See the Bar Professional Training Course – Course specification requirements and guidance
(Handbook); available on the BSB website at: http://www.barstandardsboard.org.uk/qualifying-as-
a-barrister/bar-professional-training-course/ (accessed 8 October 2014).
23
S. Kupfer, “Authentic Legal Practices” (1996) 10 Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics 33–114.
 344 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
This is where clinical legal education can be particularly important.24 As Andy
Boon noted, “Among those addressing the issue of how to teach ethics there is
an almost universal agreement that clinical courses provide the most effective
vehicle.”25 Michael Robertson has linked the skills approach, which “asserts the
importance for lawyers of acquiring skills in (1) recognising and (2) resolving
ethical dilemmas”, in particular to the teaching of ethics in and through law
clinics.26 So, it would seem clinic may be an effective means of achieving the
elusive “internal ethics alarm bells” concept that the professional bodies seek.
The Student Law Office (SLO) at Northumbria is one of the largest clinical
programmes in the world, and has won several awards.27 The intention behind
the SLO is to draw upon the medical tradition to provide students with a real
experience of working with clients to explore and provide solutions to legal
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problems. Students have responsibility for their own clients and complete all
relevant tasks on their cases under the close supervision of practising lawyers
employed by the law school. This can help to address the concept and process
of professional socialisation, but as a form of “controlled socialisation”, enabling
students to acquaint themselves with the moral and ethical aspects of lawyer-
ing in a supportive environment.28 This is aided by the students’ collaboration
with local firms of solicitors, or engagement with pro bono work, for example.
The activities undertaken by the students include interviewing, legal research,
legal writing and drafting, negotiation and even advocacy. They are required to
work in-role as lawyers and to abide by all professional conduct obligations
while reflecting on their own development and the law or legal process.
On the exempting degree, students studying to become solicitors partici-
pate in SLO modules in both years three and four. Students typically under-
take live client work only in the final year of their degree. In the preceding
year, they undertake a full module designed to help them develop the skills,
professional awareness and reflective abilities required for participation in the
SLO. Students in the third year of their studies also engage with the stan-
dardised client exercise. The use of standardised (or simulated) patients was first
introduced as a method of clinical teaching in the US in the 1960s to train
24
On clinic as a means of inculcating ethical awareness in law students, see D. Nicholson,
“‘Education, Education, Education’: Legal, Moral and Clinical” (2008) 42(2) Law Teacher 145–172.
See also, K. Kerrigan, “‘How Do You Feel about This Client?’ A Commentary on the Clinical Model as
a Vehicle for Teaching Ethics to Law Students” (2007) 11 International Journal of Clinical Legal
Education 7–26.
25
Boon, supra n. 6, p. 60.
26
M. Robertson, “Challenges in the Design of Legal Ethics Learning Systems: An Educational
Perspective” (2005) 8 Legal Ethics 222–239, at p. 227. See also N. Duncan, “Ethical Practice and
Clinical Legal Education” (2005) 7(1) International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 7.
27
Details of the work carried out in the Student Law Office are available at https://www.north-
umbria.ac.uk/about-us/academic-departments/northumbria-law-school/study/student-law-office/
(accessed 8 October 2014).
28
Professional socialisation rests on a belief that young lawyers acquire ethical awareness from older,
more experienced colleagues, the more experienced solicitor acting as a sociable expert, or mentor,
passing on knowledge and the benefit of their experience and good practice. The notion of the
“sociable expert” is discussed in R. Sennett, The Craftsman (London, Allen Lane, 2008), at pp. 246–249.
 The Law Teacher 345
medical and nursing students. Adapted to legal education, a standardised client
is someone trained to simulate a client’s contact with a solicitor on a particular
matter and present the case to law students in a standardised way.29 The
standardised clients receive extensive training: to stay true to the key facts, to
be accurate and reliable, and to respond to different styles of questioning by the
students in a standardised way. The standardised clients are also trained to
provide effective feedback to students, and to assess student performance
against a number of recognised criteria.30 Northumbria was the first English
university to adopt the method for its law students. It was thought that simula-
tion would act as preparation for clinic.31The intention was that the experience of
working with standardised clients in their third year could help bridge any
possible gap between the academic learning that students undertook in first
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and second years of their degree, and their experience of clinic in the SLO during
their fourth year. We thought that this could provide an opportunity to embed
certain legal ethical issues for students to explore.

Year four
Students spend a substantial part of their final year in the SLO. Clearly, at this
point, they could put into practice both the academic and more applied
concepts of legal ethics that have been steadily introduced. We thought that
clinical casework as a compulsory part of the integrated degree might enable
us to assess students’ ethical awareness. Students are assessed on the basis of a
practical file/portfolio they complete during their time working on behalf of
clients, but they must also complete a number of written reflections which are
assessed alongside their practical work. Engaging in reflection involves students
assessing their own understanding, gaining their knowledge through partici-
pating or contributing.32 As such, this mode of assessment may promote
professionalism, “triggering transformative learning through reflection on beha-
viours, particularly underlying reasons and assumptions”.33 Reflection may also
provide a forum for further consideration of any ethical issues or problems
29
L.M. Grosberg, “Medical Education Again Provides a Model for Law Schools: The Standardized
Patient Becomes the Standardized Client” (2001) 51(2) Journal of Legal Education 212–234.
30
On the role of standardised clients in assessment, see K. Barton, C.D. Cunningham, G.T. Jones and
P. Maharg, “Valuing What Clients Think: Standardized Clients and the Assessment of Communicative
Competence” (2006) 13(1) Clinical Law Review 1–65.
31
On simulation, see P. Maharg, Transforming Legal Education: Learning and Teaching the Law in the
Early Twenty-First Century (Aldershot, Ashgate, 2007), especially pp. 153–170; and K. Barton, P.
McKellar and P. Maharg, “Authentic Fictions: Simulation, Professionalism and Legal Learning”
(2007) 14(1) Clinical Law Review 143–193.
32
J. Michael, “Where’s the Evidence that Active Learning Works?” (2006) 30 Advances in Physiology
Education 159–167. See also K. Hinett and T. Varnava (eds), Developing Reflective Practice in Legal
Education (Warwick, UKCLE, 2002).
33
M.A. Papadakis and H. Loeser, “Using Critical Incident Reports and Longitudinal Observations to
Assess Professionalism”, in D.T. Stern (ed.), Measuring Medical Professionalism (New York, Oxford
University Press, 2006), pp. 159–174 at p. 136.
 346 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
students faced when advising clients, in addition to the regular meetings
students have with their SLO supervisors.

The situation in 2014

Our paper in 2010 outlined our thinking on how we proposed to address ethics
in the context of legal education at Northumbria University. In 2014, the
question of an ethical education for lawyers remains one of wide interest.
Perhaps most notably, the Legal Education and Training Review of 2013 stated
that the teaching and maintenance of professional ethics and values required
emphasis in legal education. However, on reviewing our progress towards
making Northumbria’s exempting law degree an “ethical” experience, we
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would have to admit that the results have been what could be described as
“mixed” – at best. There was an initial flurry of activity which made us quite
hopeful that we might achieve what we had intended, but our initial optimism
has proved to be rather premature.

Year one
By 2014, although the introductory lecture on ethics remained, it was apparent
that the court report exercise in year one had declined in importance in the
context of the year as a whole, which limited its effectiveness as a vehicle to
help to introduce any discussion of legal ethics, although this may be subject to
change in the near future. Our preference remains that students should under-
take a court visit and include in a report their views on the notion of profes-
sionalism, and how ethical considerations may inform the behaviour of the
legal professionals they witnessed in action. Ideally, these impressions would
be discussed further in seminars.
In English Legal System, the need to address the many recent changes to
the administration of justice meant that there was neither time nor space in the
syllabus for discussions of students’ understanding of legal professionalism;
however, colleagues have agreed to keep this under review.

Year two
Year two presents a number of issues, most notably the sheer breadth of the
existing programme; indeed, current thinking is that some elements must be
removed from the curriculum. In these circumstances, it is perhaps unsurprising
that we have made little or no progress in encouraging colleagues to include
further new topics into year two. Students in year two also now undertake a
problem-based learning exercise which requires them to interview a standar-
dised or simulated client; however, the potential of such problem-based exer-
cises to raise some aspect of legal ethics was rather undermined by the
absence in year one of a suitable platform on which to build; given the
 The Law Teacher 347
complexities of the exercise, it did not seem an appropriate place to introduce
a preliminary discussion of legal ethical issues. Students continue to encounter
questions of professional conduct in year two in the Tort Litigation and
Evidence (TLE) syllabus.

Year three
It has been possible to address matters relating to professional legal ethics
more effectively in year three. Students now receive a lecture on legal ethics: it
is designed to build upon what the students received in year one, but provid-
ing a forum for raising deeper questions, including the role of government
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lawyers in relation to advice regarding interrogation of terror suspects, or how

lawyers and judges approach applying laws they might find morally repugnant.
Workshops were also devised which encouraged students to explore and
examine their responses to a number of scenarios, each of which raised certain
ethical issues. Students discussed these scenarios informally in groups, before a
plenary session to pull together the discussion. Students were also asked to
read an article on the qualities good lawyers should possess.34 Students
responded well to the exercise; their feedback was generally positive, unlike
the lecturers who were asked to deliver the workshop, whose feedback was
largely negative. We believe there were a number of reasons for this. It may be
attributable at least in part to the fact that staff were chosen to deliver the
workshops more on the basis of their availability than from an interest in
teaching ethics. It required the relevant members of staff to engage with a
new area of teaching, with the time and attention that necessitates. In addition,
some staff disliked the open, discursive nature of the workshops. We will return
to these points later, although it is worth pointing out that not all staff
responses were negative; and we would suggest that the positive feedback
from the students indicates that the workshops were not only well received but
also well delivered.
However, after two years, the decision was taken to lose the ethics work-
shops from the year three curriculum, to free space and time. Ethics, as a non-
assessed topic, made way for further guidance on an assessed area: this raises
interesting questions in itself, which unfortunately we do not have space to
address here. Year three is admittedly a very busy part of the degree. Perhaps
the standardised client model could have provided an opportunity to explore
ethical considerations in a more practical rather than theoretical setting; how-
ever no ethical aspects were included in the model: a missed opportunity,
perhaps, which may be revisited before this paper is published.

For example, J. Webb, “Being a Lawyer/Being a Human Being” (2002) 5(1–2) Legal Ethics 130–151.
34
 348 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
Year four
Our proposals did not extend to year four, as we regarded matters relating to
professional legal ethics were already well addressed by the SLO. In addition,
we hoped that the pervasive approach in years one to three would have served
to make students aware of some of the broader issues surrounding professional
ethics and values, to provide some context to their SLO experiences. Ethical
dilemmas may (or may not) arise in the context of the case files given to the
students, but we think that these should be as a result of real life client issues,
rather than manufactured to draw specific lessons on questions of ethics. As
such, these real issues can then be addressed in the regular meetings the
students have with the SLO supervisors, and also in their reflections. This seems
in accord with the view that:
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Clinical method … properly implemented, offers unrivalled opportunities for

exploring and examining the ethical dimension of legal practice. The key to this
… is the existence of spontaneity or “randomness” in the clinic environment. This
provides a rich and realistic learning opportunity for both individual student
practice and group discussion that shares their experiences and application of
ethical decision-making strategies.35

Why did our experiment meet with limited success?

Our intention in writing this article was to consider whether our experiences
can offer any guidance for those intending to incorporate some consideration
of ethics into legal education. We appreciate that the nature of the exempting
degree at Northumbria University is quite specific, so in drawing a number of
tentative conclusions, here we focus upon those that may be of more general
application.
First, it would appear that there are many unresolved issues of “Pedagogy v
Pragmatism”. Some matters are practical, such as increased staff workloads, or
staff reluctance to change their teaching or to move away from tried and tested
teaching methods. Class sizes, contact time, and additional strain on often
straitened university resources may also be contributory factors. Incorporating
legal ethics into an undergraduate law degree can place more pressure on
academic staff required to deliver the material, as they must come to terms
with teaching a new and quite complex area. Staff may be worried at not
possessing the necessary knowledge or skills to adequately teach in this area.36
They may even feel resentful at having to take on an additional subject in their
35
L. Curran, J. Dickson and M.-A. Noone, “Pushing the Boundaries or Preserving the Status Quo?
Designing Clinical Programs to Teach Law Students a Deep Understanding of Ethical Practice”
(2005) 8 International Journal of Clinical Legal Education 104–122, at p. 106.
36
Some of these views are raised by Dawn Watkins of the School of Law, University of Leicester, in
“Teaching Ethics – Threat or Opportunity”: see http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/academic-practice/
resources/learning-teaching-conference/learningand%20teaching/pdfs/LTC%20Poster.pdf (accessed
8 October 2014).
 The Law Teacher 349
teaching. Incorporating new areas into teaching takes hard work and persever-
ance, particularly when additional workload allowance may not be given for the
learning process. At a time when many universities place increasing value on
research and publication, possibly to the detriment of teaching innovation, the
process of embracing new teaching areas may appear undesirable, or even a
distraction from research, unless a potential publication may result. It is impor-
tant not to overlook that this is achievable, of course – as this article evidences
– and there may be many further possibilities as the teaching of ethics
develops.
Arguably, we were too ambitious in our plans. For example, our preference
that the teaching of ethics should pervade the entire degree might require too
great a commitment from too many academic staff. It may also have left the
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topic exposed to too many vagaries of timetabling; lacking a definite berth, it

proved vulnerable to being squeezed from already packed syllabi. Perhaps an
alternative model which we might pursue would be for more discrete stand-
alone elements of legal ethics, or professional legal ethics, to be taught by a
smaller number of academics who have expressed an interest in the area. A
committed and specialised team could be adequately “workloaded” to deliver a
coherent and consistent approach, and have input into preparation of teaching
materials and modes of delivery. This measure would appear to address several
of the difficulties that we encountered.
In addition, we have seen that ethics will struggle to compete with the
existing curriculum. As the law curriculum is already very full – unless the
concept of the QLD is subject to radical change – it may well prove difficult
for legal ethics to find a permanent and secure place in the undergraduate
law degree without firm commitment from management and academic
staff. In particular, if it is a non-assessed subject, legal ethics may remain
vulnerable: it is an unfortunate truth that students are less likely to devote
time and attention to a non-assessed topic, but given the general weight of
assessment in a QLD, even more so in an exempting degree (i.e. an inte-
grated QLD + BPTC/LPC, in which students are assessed in professional
ethics and professional conduct), we would be reluctant to increase that
burden by insisting on an assessment in legal ethics. Moreover, we should
not overlook the positive feedback received for the ethics workshops when
they ran in year three; these were based around discussion of broad ques-
tions of values and professionalism and the students evidently responded
well to this open approach, regardless of the fact that they were not linked
to any form of assessment.
Other issues which may hinder the inclusion of legal ethics in the under-
graduate law curriculum may be more complex. Arguably, the lack of a clear
steer from the regulatory bodies as to exactly what they envisage being
included in an ethics curriculum has left the academy wondering what role it
 350 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
should play.37 Our decision to focus upon professional legal ethics may have
alienated colleagues who might have preferred a more “values-based”
approach, but reaching consensus on any proposed syllabus can be challen-
ging, particularly when the ultimate goal may be obscure. The title of a recent
conference report Why Should I Want to Introduce Ethics into the LLB – and What
Does “Ethics” Mean in This Context?, arguably reveals similar concerns to those
we raised in 2014, and in 2010, and also seems to indicate that the academy
remains unclear exactly what should be included in an ethics curriculum.38
Given this uncertainty, perhaps universities (and colleagues) are understand-
ably reluctant to commit time and resources to a particular course of action, if
that effort was to prove ultimately futile.
There remain lingering concerns at what the inclusion of ethics means for
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the nature and purpose of a law degree, particularly the “liberal arts” vs.
professional/vocational training debate.39 Currently and perhaps unusually
Northumbria includes both jurisprudence and the SLO as compulsory elements
of some undergraduate programmes. This if anything strengthens our belief –
despite the difficulties that we have encountered – that an exempting degree
may prove a particularly suitable format to address education and training in
legal ethics, values and professionalism.
Our relatively limited success in achieving this between 2010 and 2014 led
us to question whether we were just too early with our proposals. The Legal
Education and Training Review (LETR) reported in June 2013, and the LETR
Report may prompt further interest in the issue of ethics in legal education.40
One of the key recommendations of the Report was to strengthen require-
ments for education and training in legal ethics, values and professionalism; it
emphasised the centrality of professional ethics and legal values to the admin-
istration of justice and quality across the entire legal services sector, but
regarded the treatment of professional conduct, ethics and professionalism as
of “variable quality” across the regulated professions.41 The research supported
the need for some education in legal values for those entering the professions,

37
Even the Legal Education and Training Review (2013) regarded undergraduate law degrees as
generally outside its remit, other than where there was a direct impact on the provision of legal
services. Some of these issues are evident in contributions to The International Forum on Teaching
Legal Ethics and Professionalism website, http://www.teachinglegalethics.org/ (accessed 8 October
2014).
38
G. Ferris and N. Duncan, Fishing for Values in Legal Education: Why Should I Want to Introduce Ethics
into the LLB – and What Does “Ethics” Mean in This Context? Conference, 24th November 2012,
Nottingham Law School. The authors have kindly made PowerPoint slides available at www.law-
teacher.ac.uk/docs/duncan-and-ferris-paper.ppt (accessed 8 October 2014).
39
For a discussion of how LETR may impact upon delivery of a liberal legal education, see J. Guth
and C. Ashford, “The Legal Education and Training Review: Regulating Socio-legal and Liberal Legal
Education?” (2014) 48(1) Law Teacher 5–19.
40
On how the academy may respond to LETR, see the Law Teacher Special Issue: Legal Education
and Training Review (2014) Volume 48, Issue 1.
41
LETR, supra n. 2, Exec. Summary, p. xiii.
 The Law Teacher 351
and advocated a broad approach rather than a limited focus on conduct rules
or principles. This is reflected in the Report:

Recommendation 6:
LSET schemes should include appropriate learning outcomes in respect of profes-
sional ethics, legal research, and the demonstration of a range of written and oral
communication skills.

Recommendation 7:
The learning outcomes at initial stages of LSET should include reference (as
appropriate to the individual practitioner’s role) to an understanding of the
relationship between morality and law, the values underpinning the legal system,
and the role of lawyers in relation to those values.42
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How to respond to LETR on the question of teaching ethics has been

explored in several workshops, including those initiated by City Law
School in collaboration with the Higher Education Academy and other
law schools.43 It is likely that much more work will be required in this
area, but the LETR Report may at least serve to keep current the issue of
teaching some aspect of legal ethics in the undergraduate law degree,
encouraging many institutions to consider how best to respond to its
recommendations in this area. We hope that the issues and questions
raised in this article may offer some guidance to those preparing to
engage with those aspects of the LETR Report.

Conclusions
Whilst in principle we agree with the view that,

Ethics and values can be taught anywhere in a curriculum: in jurisprudence; or in

clinical legal education; or in traditional foundation subjects; or optional modules;
or specialist ethics modules; or in keystone research dissertations,44

the account above might indicate that the practicalities are perhaps rather
more complicated.
However, perhaps despite our experiences, and the increased and increas-
ing pressure upon the law curriculum, we maintain that there is a place, and
that there are a number of educational reasons, for some form of considera-
tion of ethics in legal education. Whilst the position and wishes of the
professions must be taken into account, at least to an extent, it must be
42
LETR, supra n. 2, Exec. Summary, p. xiv.
43
Workshop: “Teaching Legal Ethics UK: Workshop on Responding to the Legal Education and
Training Review”, March 2014.
44
G. Ferris, “Values Ethics and Legal Ethics: The QLD and LETR Recommendations 6, 7, 10, and 11”
(2014) 48(1) Law Teacher 20–32, at p. 31.
 352 Clare Sandford-Couch and Jonathan Bainbridge
firmly borne in mind that a law degree can, and – today perhaps more than
ever before – should provide preparation for a whole range of occupations.
Some consideration of ethics can have a part to play in that. Our perspective
should be framed by our answer to the question of what the law school is
for, and what are the objectives of legal study. Each institution, indeed each
academic, must search for their own answer to such questions. The LETR
Report recommendations for education and training in legal ethics, values
and professionalism may provide an added incentive to do so. As such, we
hope that the experiences outlined in this article may prove helpful to others
questioning how to address these matters.
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Acknowledgements
The above has benefited from comments and suggestions we received on papers
presented at the Eighth International Clinical Legal Education Conference
(Northumbria University, July 2010), Northumbria Research Conference (Northumbria
University, May 2014), and the Society of Legal Scholars Annual Conference (University
of Nottingham, September 2014).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.