There was a nasty comment on a WSJ blog about the fact that we have invited Lynne Stewart to be a speaker at our upcoming Ethics conference Oct. 14-16. (Please let me know if you want a brochure.) That has produced several letters to the Dean, ranging from angry to strident. Here is my reaction. Comments appreciated.
Ms. Stewart is not being invited to teach trial advocacy or legal ethics. Implicit in lawyering at the edge is the risk of going over the edge, both ethically and legally. Like every speaker at our highly successful conferences, Stewart will speak for twenty minutes and then be subjected to sharp questioning for an equal twenty minutes. Students are more likely, therefore, to come away viewing her not as a role model, but as a cautionary lesson. That’s effective education in lawyers’ ethics, which is too often considered a dry, uninteresting, and unimportant subject.