Dispute Resolution and Professional Responsibility
Faculty of Law
University of Ottawa
In this first-year required law course, we start with ethics and professional codes of conduct.
An online module introduces different approaches to ethics and links students to a current
professional code of conduct.
Ethical case studies and exercises prompt the students to articulate their own ethical framework
and to apply the professional code.
As the term progresses, other ethical and professional dilemmas are interwoven into the role
plays.
One year, students grappled with the ethical issues raised by a fictitious law student’s Facebook
posting. The posting contained anonymous information and comments about a client at the
student legal clinic as well as a description of a riotous night drinking around town. Students
identified numerous professional code violations and personal ethical dilemmas.
Later they met in small groups with upper-year teaching assistants to draft provisions for a
faculty student code of conduct.
Let’s look at some other modules and exercises. The exercises change every year.
There are two modules, Positions and Interests and Communication Skills, which students refer
to over and over in the course. Distinguishing between a client’s demands (or their stated
positions) and what they actually need to accomplish, often referred to as their interests, is a
foundational skill useful in client interviewing, negotiation and mediation. Communication skills
support all of the dispute resolution and lawyering competencies.
These modules contain definitions, examples and immediate practice and formative feedback.
Students use the Table of Contents to choose which sub-skill they want to review and practice.
The online Interviewing module has interactive theory and activity sections so that by the time
the students are ready to conduct their first, full-length interviews of an upper-year teaching
assistant, they are well prepared.
The Lost Contract and the Burst Pipe video introduces interviewing and continues the discussion
on professional responsibility.
Interviewing
Professional Responsibility
We periodically stop the interviewing video so students can answer questions about the lawyer’s
communication and interviewing skills, ethical dilemmas and the role of the lawyer.
Later on in the term, the students and their interview client engage in a mock negotiation.
In preparation for this negotiation, the students complete the online Negotiation module as well
as 3 to 4 shorter in-class negotiations.
The Mediation module starts with a mock demonstration. One year, the Dean, Bruce Feldthusen,
and the University President, Allan Rock, were the clients represented by well-known local
counsel Janice Payne and Roger Tucker. The mediator was Rick Weiler.
The Mediation module provides extensive examples and practice of skills like creating an
opening statement and preparing the client.
Students participate in a final mediation exercise observed and debriefed by a local practitioner.