New Clinic at Yale Law School

Thanks to Pace Law Library colleague Vicky Gannon for sending me this article from the Yale Daily News about a new clinic that has recently opened at the Yale Law School. According to the press release that announced the founding of the clinic,

The Ethics Bureau at Yale will be open for business in the spring of 2011. It will provide pro bono ethics counseling and opinions as well as advice on asserting ineffective assistance of counsel claims when counsel engaged in ethical misconduct.

“The course is 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 Ethics Bureau is under the direction of Lawrence Fox, former chair of the Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility of the American Bar Association and a Visiting Lecturer at Yale. The cases that the Bureau takes on come from around the United States, and according to the Yale Daily News, "Most of the clinic's clients are lawyers working pro bono for clients who cannot pay." Seven students are enrolled in the clinic this inaugural semester, and continuation of the clinic depends on steady enrollment and funding. It sounds to me as if this clinic gives students a chance to confront and ponder the real-life ethical dilemmas they will face when they begin the practice of law.