Many law professors aim to probe deep ethical issues in class. But they also need to cover the material that the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination requires. The Rotunda Nutshell fulfils that need as it digests the Model Rules in an engaging, analytical, and often critical way. In a surprisingly pithy manner, this book places the Rules in an historic context that lets the student understand problems with prior versions of the Rules, which led to the present version. The Nutshell also analyzes the American Law Institute's Restatement of the Law Governing Lawyers, Third. This approach frees up precious class time for important normative issues. And, this Nutshell helps your students come up with better answers to your Socratic questions than you anticipated. This book has proved so popular as an explanation of the basic principles of legal ethics that it has been translated into Japanese and used there to teach American legal ethics.


Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: Nutshells
Publication Date: 04/11/2018

Ronald D Rotunda

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  • The 5th edition of this Nutshell incorporates all the changes that the ABA made in 2013, to reflect the changes in technology and the law
  • This Nutshell also discusses the major revision to Rule 8.4 by adding a new subsection (g), dealing with harassment or discrimination based on sex, religion, national origin, ethnicity, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, or socioeconomic status.
  • This Nutshell also analyzes new Formal Ethics Opinions that the ABA has issued since the 4th edition.
  • This new edition also evaluates new and influential cases since the last edition.

Learn more about this series.