Mastering Professional Responsibility

This second edition of Mastering Professional Responsibility presents a concise explanation of the rules and concepts of lawyer professional responsibility. In creating the book, the author's goal is to provide students in the typical law school professional responsibility course with a source that explains the relevant rules and concepts in a way understandable to novices to the legal profession. In furtherance of that goal, the book provides a straightforward treatment of the subject, with special attention to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct and all recent amendments to those rules through the date of publication.

For each topic, the book briefly addresses any relevant rationales, but primarily focuses on explaining the parameters of the applicable standards in a clear, understandable, step-by-step manner. A typical treatment of a topic includes not only a clear explanation of each standard, often broken into manageable concepts, but also a simple example illustrating the application of that standard. These easy-to-understand examples are designed to facilitate learning in students who, in contrast to practicing lawyers, have not yet had the opportunity to develop an understanding of the context of law practice. This book is an excellent accompaniment to the typical professional responsibility course. The book is also a good preparatory tool for the Multistate Professional Responsibility Exam, which is a requirement for admission for most states.

Grace Giesel is the Bernard Flexner Professor and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at University of Louisville Louis D. Brandeis School of Law.