LEGAL EDUCATION AND ETHICS: A road towards social justice

What are the demands of educating future lawyers about social justice? This chapter argues that legal education must go beyond the inclusion of social-justice courses in the curriculum, but must also be linked to, and substantiated by, ethical considerations. Ethics can be described as an element of achieving social justice and, as such, ethical standards must be upheld by future law graduates and lawyers irrespective of whether it is inconvenient or unpopular at the time. It is argued that, to achieve social justice within society, the profession must be infused with a strong focus on ethical standards by means of legal education, which will eventually impact the application of the law and the legal profession. From a legal perspective, ethics cannot be limited to the individual’s view of what is considered right or wrong but must rather be objectively determinable, and thereby an objective standard should be established to address the issue of ethics within legal education. The law itself may provide a standard, but such a position is fallible, as certain conduct that may be considered legal would not necessarily be considered ethical in the circumstances. More so, not all ethical behaviour is legally legislated. Therefore, ethics (which is argued to be one of the elements to achieve social justice) must be more than merely the knowledge and application of law. Against this background, this chapter analyses the factors involved in teaching ethics in both the academic and professional legal education phases to establish whether the current approach to ethics facilitates or hinders social justice ideals within the legal profession.