Article

The Prospects of Applying Cumulative Prospect Theory to Analyze Attorney Behavior and the Model Rules of Professional Conduct

January 2007
SSRN Electronic Journal

January 2007

DOI:10.2139/ssrn.988614

Authors:

Attorneys frequently make decisions involving choices that are risky or uncertain as to their consequences. Some of these decisions are imbued with issues of legal ethics. Some legal scholars, especially proponents of the so-called "behavioral law and economics" school of legal analysis, have begun to study these decisions under cumulative prospect theory, a behavioral decision theory focusing on decisions under risk and uncertainty. This essay begins with an overview of this theory. It then examines whether cumulative prospect theory should be applied to legal ethics. Assuming the viability of the theory and its application to legal ethics, Rule 3.3 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct was the test subject of a survey administered to practitioners. This essay will share the empirical results and observations from this survey. Finally, this essay offers conclusions and recommendations for future research and scholarship.

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Chapter

Answering Legal Problem Questions in a Grid Format

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The development of legal reasoning skills is a fundamental aspect of legal education. What has sometimes been called “learning to think like a lawyer” is a threshold competency that students must acquire before they can progress to more complex analyses of broader legal issues. This chapter discusses the use of problem-based scenarios to both engage students and to develop legal analysis. It ... [Show full abstract] outlines the threshold difficulties students must overcome in order to read texts as lawyers and explains how use of a grid format answer – rather than an essay format – can both assist students to overcome these difficulties more easily and also provide a more efficient form of marking. The chapter describes the advantages of a grid format answer both for beginning students and also for later year and postgraduate students. It also suggests ways the format can be used to require students to consider broader issues than merely legal analysis.

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Jenna Bednar

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Elevating Therapeutic Jurisprudence: Structural Suggestions for Promoting a Therapeutic Jurisprudenc...

June 2012

David B. Wexler

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Full-text available

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January 2009

Andrea Curcio

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September 2019

Ann Mumford

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Chapter

Introduction: New Legal Realism: Law and Social Science in the New Millennium

January 2016

Elizabeth Ellen Mertz

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