Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility

Advocacy and Representation: Understanding Your Ethical Obligations

As a licensed attorney, understanding your ethical obligations and responsibilities is the most basic, bottom-line requirement of the job. But the study of legal ethics isn’t necessarily straightforward. New technology changes how lawyers do their jobs and how clients communicate. Laws change, as do social norms. Learning the bar rules is important, but understanding the “why” behind legal ethics and professional responsibility standards will help you throughout your career.

As a law student at Michigan, you will have the opportunity to build both a theoretical foundation and a practical framework for understanding legal ethics and the professional responsibility you will take on when you pass the bar. 

Our faculty work closely with the American Bar Association on bar rules and guidance for practicing attorneys, and several have served in leadership roles at the national and state level, including on the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility.

Our courses are taught by leading scholars in public interest, civil procedure, and criminal law. For 2L and 3L students, our clinics offer hands-on experience at navigating sensitive attorney-client relationships and take on the obligations of representation and advocacy.