Title: "What's Ethics Got to do With It?" Requiring students to be cognisant of ethical parameters in commercial practice
Abstract: If corporate failures and misconduct1 are any indication, teachers of commercial law occupy an important gatekeeping role: that of exploring with their students conceptual and ethical questions about the role of commercial law in legal practice. However, my anecdotal experience of teaching postgraduate level students the Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (GDLP) at the Australian National University (ANU) is that a significant number of students consider commercial law with a level of indifference and even aversion. My teaching experience also indicates that some students view legal ethics as a discrete area of study, separate from substantive areas of law such as commercial law − an experience supported by a review of literature in the Australian and US contexts.2 All GDLP students study commercial practice3 online, as part of a large simulation involving them in team-based transactional work. The GDLP is a practical legal training course undertaken by law graduates, the completion of which qualifies them to apply for admission as an Australian legal practitioner. In this context, the educators’ role as gatekeeper is twofold. The first is to engage and challenge students in an area in which many later find themselves employed and desiring further training. The second is to require students to be cognisant of the ethical dimensions of commercial law practice. This paper explores the idea that commercial law teachers are gatekeepers in the GDLP. It explains the initiatives taken in the GDLP both to make the study of commercial practice
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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