Ethics Programs
Ethics and Professionalism Library
Cooley’s Ethics and Professionalism Library maintains over 3900 volumes of ethics materials. The Ethics and Professionalism Library is open to students, faculty, and attorneys to promote the research and study of ethics and professionalism.
Professor Peter Kempel oversees the Ethics and Professionalism Library and has continued to collect items on ethics and professionalism. Among them, the book entitled Reflection of a Lawyer's Soul: The Institutional Experience of Professionalism at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School, comprises a response to the Carnegie Report on educating lawyers and showcases Cooley's implementation of the very proposals that report set forth for law schools. Royalties from the sale of the book are contributed by all authors to the Center for Ethics.
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Ethics in the Curriculum
The Center works with Cooley faculty to find interesting and probative methods of incorporating ethics into the required and elective courses in both the JD and LLM programs. Faculty members have designed and teach elective courses based in ethics and professionalism including:
Ethics in Advanced Appellate Technique
Negotiation and Confrontation
Advanced Professional Ethics
Cultural Competency in the Legal Profession
Facilitative Mediation
Professionalism Portfolio Project
Pathway to Success: Your Career and Portfolio
Standards and Ethics of Tax Practice
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Enforcing Student Conduct
Codes
Students engaging in unethical or unprofessional conduct
are investigated, counseled, and sanctioned, as appropriate.
Along with faculty, Cooley students also serve as counselors,
prosecutors, and judges in Honor Code cases. They also assist
in enforcing the Honor Code through their service as exam
proctors for first term exams.
Reports of Honor Code violations and Disciplinary Procedure
violations are investigated by “investigating deans” designated
for each campus: Martha Moore at Auburn Hills, Tracey Brame
at Grand Rapids, Joan Vestrand at Ann Arbor, and Cynthia
Ward at Lansing. The work of the investigating deans is supported
and complemented by the Honor Council, Discipline Board,
Office of Law School Advocate, and Office of Student Assistance.
Professor Nancy Wonch has long been the Chair of the Honor
Council, shepherding many cases through hearings and resolutions
every year, dealing with students’ counsel, and overseeing
the entire administration of the Honor Code and Disciplinary
Procedures, including faculty appointments and responsibilities
to various offices relevant to handling these cases. Nancy
also chairs the faculty Committee on Honor Code, Disciplinary
Procedures, and Professionalism, which views and guides the
school’s activities in the area of discipline and professionalism
programming.
Most of our students are honorable and our statistics bear
this out with violations amounting to less than 1%
of the total student enrollment. In 2008, 27 cases
were referred to the Honor Council for imposition of sanction.
Twenty-five cases were admissions by students and two cases
involved a hearing before the Honor Council to determine
whether an ethical violation occurred. The Honor Council
found in both cases that an ethical violation had occurred.
In 2009, 73 requests for investigation were filed; of those
resolved, only 17 were referred to the Honor Council for
imposition of sanction. A complete report of Honor Code Investigations
for 2009 with comparisons by violations and campuses will
be filed with Dean LeDuc in early 2010.
In 2009, one hearing was held before the Discipline Board,
and the Board ordered revocation of the admission to Cooley
and the 33 credits earned by an individual while a student
at Cooley and before transferring to and graduating from
another law school. The misconduct was a series of lies and
failures to make required disclosures. The individual only
disclosed and corrected his false statements after several
state bars forced him to do so.
Dean Cynthia Ward, on behalf of the Dean of Students Office,
in cooperation with the Exams and Grade Appeals Office, piloted
a student exam proctor project in the Trinity 2009 term on
the Lansing campus with second and third year students assisting
in the administration of midterm and final exams for first
term students. Student Exam Proctors assist regular exam
proctors prior to the start of the exam and at the end of
the exam when time has been called. Our student proctors
are making a difference. They are visible in enforcing the
Honor Code and have been recognized by first-termers as "student
proctors" outside of the exam room. One proctor, who
was also a teaching assistant for a first-term faculty member,
included exam procedures in her end of term coverage of the
course, to ensure that students would not break rules. Student
Exam Proctors volunteer their time; they are not paid.
The Student Exam Proctor program has been very successful.
It is important for students to see other students enforcing
the Honor Code. The work of student exam proctors before
the exam and after the exam is visible and impressive. Most
allegations of suspected Honor Code violations involve conduct
that occurs right before the start or right after time is
called at the end of an exam. In 2008, we had fifteen reports
of student writing before time and writing after time. We
want to eliminate these reports. In Lansing, there were no
reports of writing over time during Trinity 2009 first term
exams where we had student exam proctors present.
Approximately fifteen students worked varying shifts during
midterms and finals for Trinity 2009. For Michaelmas 2009,
the student proctor project expanded to Grand Rapids and
Ann Arbor (students from Lansing traveled to Ann Arbor to
proctor exams there). Approximately sixty students attended
informational meetings to become a student proctor in Grand
Rapids and Lansing. In total, thirty students actively served
as student proctors for 2009 in Lansing, Grand Rapids and
Ann Arbor. The project, which is managed through TWEN, will
be school-wide in Hilary 2010.
In 2009, Honors Convocations were held at each campus for
the first time in the school’s history.
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Integrity in Our
Communities Speaker Series
The Center brings nationally and locally recognized speakers
to each campus each term to talk with our students, staff,
and faculty about issues, trials, and lawsuits touching on
ethical and professionalism matters.
Since the series' inception in Hilary 2007, Lansing presenters
have included: Chief Judge of the Michigan Court of Appeals
William Whitbeck, nationally-recognized criminal defense
attorney Frank Reynolds, former State Bar of Michigan President
and State Board of Education member and practicing attorney
Reginald Turner, and Michigan Supreme Court Justice Cavanagh.
Attendees at the Lansing campus’s nine events have
numbered well over 400, meaning that hundreds of students
and legal practitioners are turning to Cooley for information
on ethics, service, and professionalism.
Grand Rapids presenters have included:
former State Bar of Michigan President Jon Muth, Federal
Magistrate Scoville, Retired Grand Rapids City Attorney Phil
Balkema, local attorney and amateur actor Jon G. March, Cooley
alumni Ken O'Deen and Tom Dignan, and former Grand Rapids
attorney and professional actor Gary Mitchell. The message
of ethics, service, and professionalism has been shared with
over 350 law students, employees, and members of the legal
community through this speaker series in Grand Rapids.
Auburn Hills presenters have included:
Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly, State
Bar President Ed Pappas, Judges Leo Bowman and Denise Page
Hood, and Cooley graduate and nationally recognized criminal
defense attorney Stephen Rabaut. To date, nearly 400 Cooley
students and members of the legal community have visited
the Auburn Hills campus to learn about ethics, service, and/or
professionalism from these experienced lawyers.
At the Ann Arbor campus, a wonderful kick-off
event that featured chief public defender in Washtenaw County
Lloyd Powell attracted 30 students.
Click here to see a list of featured
speakers.
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Ethics Speakers’ Bureau
Cooley staff and faculty make themselves available to train and educate groups outside the school interested in ethics and professionalism, such as lawyers, paralegals, students, business owners and executives, local governments, and public interest groups. If you are interested in having a speaker for your organization who can speak about legal ethics and professionalism, please contact Kathy Lawrence at Cooley Law School at (517) 371-5140 or at lawrenck@cooley.edu.
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