THE HENRY LATIMER CENTER FOR PROFESSIONALISM ANNUAL LAW SCHOOL PROFESSIONALISM REPORT

DUE: MARCH 1, 2015

Law School: Levin College of Law, University ofFlorida

Dean: George L. Dawson, Interim Dean

Completed By: Various administrators and faculty contributed to this report

Please complete the infonnation below regarding any activities and projects completed since June 30, 2014 (additional pages can be attached ifneeded):

A. Orientation

1. Please describe how professionalism is implemented in the new student orientation. Is an oath of professionalism administered during new student orientation? If so, please provide text.

The Dean welcomes the new students to the law school followed by a thirty minute presentation about the profession and expectations. An Alumni Speaker also provides new students with infonnation about his or her work and gives advice on what students should do in law school in order to be great lawyers. On Day Two local attorneys meet with each section and provide infonnation about the profession (in a program titled) "The Law PrJcticc in Context."

The faculty teaching the "Introduction to Lawyering and the Legal Profession" course give a one-hour presentation titled, "Professionalism in the Law School ConunWiity and the Profession." The presentation included infonnation that introduced students to the defining attributes of the legal profession, including a code ofethics, the assumption ofduties to clients, the justice system, and society, and the fundamentals ofprofessional identity. The course focuses on the evolving nature oflegal services, types oflaw practices and demographics of the legal profession, and the skills required for law practice. The presentation includes hypotheticals and vignettes, as well as a skit in which the upper-level student ambassadors (who are the students who assist with the orientation program) role-play particular siruations. At the conclusion ofthe program, the students take the oath ofprofessionalism, which is reprinted below; the oath is administered by a judge:

Oath ofProfessionalism As a student entering the University of Florida Levin College ofLaw, I • recognize that my responsibilities to the legal profession begin as a student of the law and continue thereafter as a member of the Bar. I am both joining an academic community and embarking on a professional career. continued on next page

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I will conduct myself in a professional manner with dignity and civility and will treat all of my colleagues- students, staff, faculty and members of the legal profession with courtesy and respect.

I will strive to uphold the highest standards of academic honesty, integrity and ethical practice both now and throughout my professional life.

I acknowledge and accept the privileges and responsibilities inherent in becoming a legal professional.

This oath I take freely and upon my honor.

2. Does the law school have a written definition ofprofessionalism? Ifso, please provide and list where is it published (i.e.: mission statement, code of conduct, student handbook etc.).

We do not have a written definition of professionalism as such. However, professionalism is addressed indirectly in two places: the Honor Code and the College ofLaw's Mission Statement. Honor Code: http://www.law.ufl.edu/student-affairsladditional-infommtionlhonor-code-and-conunitteelhonor-code Vision & Mission Statement: http://www.law.ufl.edu/about/about-uf-law/vision-mission Mission Statement The mission ofdte University ofFlorida Fredric G. Levin College ofLaw is to achieve excellence in educating professionals, advancing legal scholarship, serving the public, and fostering justice. We aspire to prepare lawyers to serve their clients, tile justice system, and the public with a high level of accomplishment and a conunitment to the highest ideals ofthe legal profession. We strive to provide students with a well-rounded legal education. Our curriculum is designed to teach students about the law and to help them develop the skills necessary to use tltat knowledge in practice. Our goal is for our graduates to possess tile core competencies essential to embark on the practice of law. These core competencies include:

1. Legal Analysis (including knowledge of laws and rules, the ability to apply laws and rules to different factual settings, and tile ability to engage in legal argumentation); 2. Legal Research and Writing (including the ability to conduct independent legal research and produce legal writings of professional quality); continued on next page

B. Curriculum

3. How is professionalism integrated in your required, elective, and doctrinal courses? Please list the courses with a description and include the name of the faculty member that teaches the course that incorporates professionalism.

REQUIRED COURSES Introduction to Lawyering and the Legal Profession (2 credits) This course required for first year students introduces students to tile legal profession and lawyering with an emphasis on the imponant role of lawyers in serving clients and achieving a just society. It focuses on the evolving nature of legal services, tile various types of law practices, Ute demographics of tile legal profession, and the challenges lawyers may face in finding personal satisfaction in their careers. The course acquaints students with the defining attributes ofthe legal profession, including adherence to a code of ethics and tile assumption of duties to clients, tile justice system, and society. It is designed to assist students in developing an ethical professional identity, acquiring tile skills to practice law witlt professionalism, and working with people from diverse backgrounds. This course provides students with an overview of some of the skills essential to the practice oflaw, including the fundamentals of interviewing, counseling, negotiation, mediation, collaboration, and oilier types of legal problem-solving. The course features materials, lectures, and speakers on, among oilier things, professionalism-related topics. At least one-third of the course is devoted to tltese topics. The speakers included lawyers, judges. and personnel from The Florida Bar. Team taught by Professors Amy Mashburn, Stacey Steinberg, Jill Womble, and Jennifer Zedalis

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3. Fundamentals of Client Services (including interviewing and counseling skills); 4. Fundamentals of Dispute Processing and Legal Problem Solving (including litigation, settlement, and transactions); and 5. Fundamentals of Professional Responsibility and Identity (including knowledge of the shared values of the legal profession and ethical problem solving, the skills to create a professional identity, and the skills to work with people from diverse backgrounds).

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Legal Writing (fall semester)(2 credits) and Appellate Advocacy (spring semester)(2 credits) These courses are required of all first year students. Professionalism is an integral part of both semester-long courses. Students are taught the importance of deadlines, of diligence, and of solving their legal problems through research and written communication. In the first course, emphasis is placed on the importance of avoiding careless errors, ensuring the accuracy of citations, quotations, and representations to the court, and the importance of establishing and maintaining credibility by being scrupulously accurate in presenting the facts and the law, both in writing and in oral argument. In the latter course, teachers and students discuss issues related to representing clients with whom the lawyer disagrees, professional demeanor, and the tension between candor to the court and representing the client's interests. Taught by Professors Mary Adkins, Joe Jackson, Leanne Pflaum, Shalini Ray, Betsy Ruff, Stacey Steinberg, Pat Thomson, Diane Tomlinson, and Henry Wihnyk

Professional Responsibility and the Legal Profession (3 credits) Examines role of the individual lawyer and legal profession as an entity in contemporary society. Topics include the role of the lawyer as advocate, counselor and community leader; the ethical and moral obligations of lawyers to their clients, other lawyers and society as derived from general ethical and moral principles and as embodied in model rules of the Code of Professional Responsibility; and problems encountered in representing particular categories of clients, including corporations, criminal defendants and indigents. Taught by Professors Amy Mashburn, Shani King and Tracy Reid

ELECTIVE COURSES

Electronic Discovery (2 credits) Recommended course: Evidence. Explores how the current information explosion is transforming the civil litigation process and the critical issues which arise in managing data in the civil litigation process. The course will examine developing case law and address the practical problems and issues which arise in the preservation, collection, searching, processing, and production of electronic data. The course will provide an introduction to technologies, tools, and software currently utilized in this rapidly developing specialty area. Course topics will include the varieties and locations of electronically stored data (ESI); computer forensics, data recovery, and its application in the discovery and litigation process; data preservation obligations under the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which went into effect on 12-1-06; the duties and responsibilities of counsel under Rule 26(f); how to prepare for and handle the Rule 26(f) conference; the preservation of attorney-client privilege in voluminous productions; the use of quick-peek and non-waiver

provisions; sampling techniques; the role of experts and vendors in the a-discovery process; obtaining electronic data from 3rd parties; safe harbor provisions under Rule 37(f); ethical and disclosure obligations under the new Federal Rules; special data production and reservation issues associated with criminal and governmental investigations; sanctions for spoliation. Adjunct Professor William Hamilton

Florida Legal Ethics Seminar (2 credits) This seminar will provide an opportunity for students to explore advanced topics in Florida professional responsibility and legal ethics. The subject matter will encompass issues that arise in the several contexts where professional standards, disciplinary rules, and the common law of legal ethics typically apply: the disciplinary and regulatory setting; use in non-disciplinary judicial proceedings; and professional malpractice cases. After an overview and some generally assigned readings and research exercises, students will choose topics and begin in-depth research. At designated times, students will be required to turn in detailed outlines, rough drafts and final drafts of a research paper. The paper must be at least 20 double-spaced pages of normal-sized text with appropriate footnotes. Students will also be required to present the results of their research in a presentation to the class. These presentations will begin mid-semester. A student's grade for the course will be based upon: compliance with the attendance policy; the presentation (25%); and the paper (75%). Professor Amy Mashburn

Law Practice Management (2 credits) Students must be fourth-semester or later. This is a graded course. Students must complete a class project. Course covers topics such as the law firm as a business, practical skills in the practice of law, expanding practice through client and professional development, and ethical and professionalism responsibilities. An introduction to Law Practice Management Skills to include managing your practice, your office and your time. Topics include business management, time keeping and billing, accounting, computer software and hardware technology, client development and marketing. Special emphasis on practice skills for practicing lawyers, professionalism and ethics, and balance of life issues. Adjunct Professor Lawrence Marraffino

Professional Practices Seminar (2 credits) Through case studies involving "controversial" situations (among others, a Black lawyer representing the Ku Klux Klan), in-class discussions and presentations, and guest lectures Qudges and lawyers), we'll explore real-world ethical and moral issues arising in law practice. The goal is to help you to be better equipped to answer the tough questions you may face in the practice of law by having you reflect, now, on issues arising when the pressures of the situation (the client, the firm, the opponent, the colleague, the court, the society at large) conflict with your individual sense of what is "right." Professor Tracy Reid

Prosecutorial Ethics (2 credits) This course is intended to dispel common misperceptions of the role of the prosecutor. It aims at bringing the students to understand how the prosecutor's role as a minister of justice rather than an advocate for a client places unique obligations on prosecutors and how the practitioner can ethically reconcile the adversarial role as an advocate with the non-adversarial role as a minister of Justice. Professor George Dekle

Graduate Tax LL.M. Program The course of study for the LL.M. in Taxation and the LL.M. in International Taxation includes a mandatory 3-hour workshop on Legal Ethics for the Tax Lawyer.

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Clinics and Skills Courses Issues of ethics and professionalism are addressed routinely and pervasively in all of our clinics both in simulations used to prepare the students and as they arise in the course of their clinical work. Our six clinics are: Conservation Clinic (Professor Tom Ankersen}, Intimate Partner Violence Assistance Clinic (Professor Teresa Drake}, Family Advocacy Clinic (Professor Jeff Grater), Juvenile Clinic (Professor Meshon Rawls), Mediation Clinic (Professor Robin Davis), Criminal Clinic- Defender (Professor Monique Haughton-Worrell), and Criminal Clinic- Prosecutor (Professor George Dekle). Similarly, issues of ethics and professionalism are built into simulations that are used and are addressed in readings and lectures in many of the skills courses in our curriculum, such as Mediation, Negotiation and Mediation, Interviewing Counseling and Negotiation, as well as in Trial Practice, Trial Advocacy, and Pretrial Practice.

In addition to these courses in which professionalism and legal ethics play a substantial role, a survey of the faculty yielded numerous responses indicating examples of how professionalism is incorporated into courses, including Advanced Bankruptcy, Administrative Law, Torts, Advanced Dispute Resolution Seminar, Legal Drafting, Tools of Awareness for Lawyers, Law and Psychiatry, Criminal Procedure­Adversary System, Criminal Procedure-- Police and Police Practices, Comparative Law, Insurance Law, and Evidence.

4. List and describe any workshops, symposiums. conferences, or seminars that are or have recently been offered that promote professionalism.

Law and Justice Conference- This partnership ofUF Law student groups and professional groups led by the Josiah T. Walls Bar Association enables law students to participate in a conference that reaches out to youth from demographics underrepresented in the legal profession and hosts them for a day ofactivities at the Jaw school. The goal ofthe event is to equip youth to become active :tgents for positive change in their communities. The founh annual presentation ofthis conference was held on February 7. 2015.

Spring Boot Camp: The second annual spring boot camp was held on Friday, January 23, 20 15 and featured practitioners from a broad range oflegal specialties who delivered presentations to students on how to cmft their professional identities.

Second Annual Joe Milton "Civility Matters" Luncheon: Tite Joseph P. Milton Professionalism Endowment at UF Law was created by a bequest from the late Joe Milton. In cooperation with the American Board ofTrial Advocates, the College has initiated an annual working lunch for law students at which ABOTA's "Civility Matters" progrrun is presented. The date of this year's luncheon, has yet to be scheduled.

5. What additional resources or programs are offered to students regarding professionalism?

Joe Little Pro Bono Endowment: An anonymous gift established an endowment that suppons law student activities in pro bono legal work. Income from the Fund has been used to defray out-of-pocket expenses of law students engaged in pro bono activities under the supervision ofmembers ofthe bar. More recently, the endowment has provided living expense stipends to students engaged in pro bono service during the summer for public interest organizations.

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6. How does the law school utilize the handbooks that are offered bi-annually to law students from the Center for Professionalism and the Standing Committee on Professionalism that contains the rules that regulate The Florida Bar?

We provide the booklets to students in their Orientation materials.

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Professional Development Fund: This fund was established to reimburse Jaw students for expenses associated with participation in off campus professional activities. Law students have utilized this fund to attend conferences for practitioners, bar luncheons, Florida Bar section meetings, the Florida Bar Annual Meeting, national bar association section meetings, and CLE programs. These funds assist law students' efforts in acquiring knowledge about the professional identity of lawyers.

Alumni Mentoring Program: This program contains a database of UF Law alumni who have volunteered in specific ways to help further the professional development of UF Law students. Students utilize this database to foster mentoring relationships with practitioners. The law school developed an "Office Hours" program which enables law students to sign up for one on one/small group meetings with lawyers and judges who share professional guidance.

UF Law NaviGators Program: The College partnered with the Judge Paul C. Huck, Senior United States District Judge, to organize an event at the federal courthouse in Miami that allowed current and incoming law students to meet with alumni to get advice on preparing to enter the legal profession.

C. Publications

7. List any articles, newsletters, or publications that your faculty or students have written or have been recognized in relating to professionalism.

Leonard L. Riskin & Rachel Wohl, PDQ Mindfulness in the Heat ofConflict: Taking Stock, 20 Harvard Negotiation Law Review (2015)

Leonard Riskin, Beginning with Yes: A Review Essay on Michael Wheeler's The Art ofNegotiation: Improving Your Way to Agreement in a Chaotic World, 16 Cardozo Journal ofConflict Resolution (2015)

D. Intra and Extracurricular Student Activities

8. Please list and describe any student intra and/or extracurricular activities that have promoted or integrated professionalism.

Professionalism Week: Student organizations, in partnership with the law school administration, have organized the annual "Professionalism Week." Events feature forums that enable members ofthe legal community to share advice with students regarding the professional expectations of the legal profession.

Community Service and Pro Bono: Law students arc encouraged to participate in community service and pro bono work. As a part of the first-year student orientation, all students in each incoming class participate in a community service project at an Alachua County public service organization. Student organizations partner with the law school to actively create, promote, and participate in a broad spectrum of mentoring programs. Examples include participation in the Young Lawyer Division ofThe Florida Bar Mentoring Program, the Minority Mentoring Picnic, and a mentoring program in partnership with the Hispanic National Bar Association.

9. Please list and describe any mentoring program(s) available to students through local attorneys, judges, faculty, or other students.

Alumni Mentoring Program: This program contains a database ofUF Law alumni, who have volunteered in specific ways to help further the professional development ofUF Law students. Students utilize this database to help foster mentoring relationships with practitioners.

Student organizations, such as the UF Law Chapter of the Young Lawyer Division ofTite Florida Bar, participate in mentoring programs facilitated by the Florida Bar.

The "Office Hours" program enables law students to sign up for one on one/small group meetings with lawyers and judges who share professional guidance.

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E. Awards and Recognition

10. Please list and describe the qualifications for any awards received by faculty or students regarding professionalism in the last year.

Professor Amy Mashburn was recognized as the recipient of the Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award.

F. Additional Efforts and Comments

11. Please describe any faculty committees tasked with professionalism initiatives.

The College's Diversity and Community Relations Committee is charged with serving as a welcoming forum to atlow conuuunity discussion of issues related to community, climate, and diversity, and to explore positive steps to identify our shared values and create a tolerant and welcoming conununity for all.

12. Indicate whether your law school has a designated dean or faculty member assigned with professionalism responsibilities, provide their name, and contact information.

Professor Amy Mashburn Director ofLawyering and Professionalism Programs P.O. Box 117625 Gainesville FL 32611 mashbum@1aw.ufl.edu 352-273-0963

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13. Please provide any additional information relating to professionalism efforts that are taking place at your law school, including inns ofcourt, local voluntary bar associations or other organizations.

The law school continues to be a hub for the exchange of ideas regarding professionalism, the rule of law, the role of lawyers in society, professional identity, self-awareness, and other values articulated in the College's Mission Statement. UF Law provides a dynamic range of speakers on a wide range of topics which further the advancement of professionalism and knowledge of the law. Reports on these events can be found in various college publications and on our website.

Students from the Levin College of Law participate in two Inns of Court: the Gerald T. Bennett American Inn of Court and the James C. Adkins, Jr. American Inn of Court.

Law students comprise one-third (1/3) of the Gerald T. Bennett Inn of Court's total membership and two law students currently serve on the Inn's Board of Directors. This year, the Board voted to continue the Inn's focus on professionalism, while also placing more emphasis on mentoring law students and less experienced attorneys on various legal issues, including the importance of, and need for, professionalism. continued on next page

14. Please describe the efforts used to promote the Law Faculty/Administrator Professionalism Award, Group Professionalism Award, and Law Student Essay Contest for 2015.

Students are notified of the Law Student Essay Contest by Professor Mashburn and the Office of Student Affairs uses internal law school communication mechanisms to publicize the Law Student Essay Contest.

Please submit to:

Henry Latimer Center for Professionalism The Florida Bar 651 East Jefferson Street Tallahassee, FL 32399-2300 E-mail: cfu@flabar.ors

Due on or before: March 1, 2015

Signature: _._41f_r-~-'-------Date: d../.9.7/;S­6

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Throughout the year, attorney members of the Inn are required to provide mentoring opportunities to every law student in the Inn each month and to report back on the mentoring experience at the next meeting. Mentoring opportunities have included discussions over lunch as well as opportunities to observe court proceedings, client meetings, mediations, and negotiations. The Gerald T. Bennett Inn is committed, as an association, to fostering continued professionalism in its attorney and judicial members and to teaching professionalism to law students by example and through mentoring opportunities.

The objectives of the James C. Adkins, Jr., Inn of Court include fostering greater understanding of, and appreciation for, the adversary system of dispute resolution in American law, with particular emphasis on ethics, civility and professional standards of excellence; promoting interaction and collegiality among members in order to minimize misapprehensions, misconceptions and failures of communication that obstruct the effective practice of law; facilitating the development of law students and less experienced lawyers as skilled participants in the American court system; and promoting collegiality among professionals and transmitting ethical values from one professional generation to another.

At a joint event in November, the Gerald T. Bennett Inn of Court partnered with the James C. Adkins, Jr., Inn of Court to participate in an event focused on creating camaraderie between the Inns and on encouraging a continued level of professionalism for all members of the legal profession while at work and at play, both in and out of the courtroom.