Real Ethics for Real Lawyers

Before returning to academia as Dean at Boston College Law School, Dan Coquillette was a litigation partner at a major law firm. Real Ethics for Real Lawyers is not addressed at purely academic controversies, but at the kind of practical ethical and professional dilemmas that law students will inevitably encounter on graduation.

Based on many years of classroom experience at Boston University, Cornell, Boston College, and Harvard, and on extensive consulting at major law firms, the book is organized around actual problems that routinely occur in practice. But it does not pretend that such problems are routinely solved by the mechanical application of rules, although all important and relevant rules are included. Rather, these problems are seen in the context of decided cases, academic articles, and the overriding principles of ethical philosophy. Since the first edition in 2005, law graduates have found this approach to be of the greatest relevance to their actual success, and even survival, in the profession. The problem method also makes the book self-explanatory and stimulating in the classroom.

The new edition updates all the included professional rules, and also adds important new cases, spanning the most controversial and problematic topics, from conflict of interest to advertising. Whenever a new lawyer takes on an assignment, changes a law firm, closes a transaction or argues a case, Real Ethics for Real Lawyers should be close at hand. The book is fun and simple to teach but, much more importantly, it has proven itself to be of lasting value in the real world.