This spring, Yale Law will offer its students a new clinical opportunity, the Ethics Bureau at Yale. Through this clinic students will offer ethics counseling for pro bono organizations, opinions on cases in which lawyers may have behaved unethically, and guidance to bar associations and ethics professors regarding the standards of professional responsibility in specific cases.
The foundation of this clinic lies in the work of two Yale Law students, Tanya Abrams ’11 and Jason Wittlin-Cohen ’10. They met visiting lecturer Lawrence Fox, a partner in Drinker, Biddle & Reath, as students in his course. Working with him later on the Supreme Court case Holland v. State of Florida, Abrams and Wittlin-Cohen wrote an amicus brief representing a group of ethics professor who supported the appeal plea of Albert Holland, a death row inmate in Florida. The brief stated that Holland’s lawyer failed to meet his ethical obligations due to filing Holland’s federal habeaus corpus claim after the statute of limitations had passed. On June 14, 2010, the Court’s 7-2 decision cited the brief and ruled in favor of Holland, extending the amount of time in which he could seek habeas corpus and remanding the case for further proceedings.
Impressed with Abrams and Wittlin-Cohen’s work, as amicus briefs are rarely used as an integral part of a Supreme Court ruling, Fox believed that their contribution to the case could serve as the foundation for a new ethics clinic at Yale Law. After discussions with multiple faculty members, Fox proposed the idea, which was approved.
Fox spoke of the clinic as “the first of its kind. It will provide a valuable service not otherwise available and an opportunity for our students to understand the real-life dimensions to the professional responsibility obligations of lawyers.”
The clinic is slated to open in Spring 2011. In addition to working 10 hours per week, students will attend a companion course through which they will learn about ethical issues in law and the role of an expert witness in the litigation process.
