This book is designed to support the expansion in scope of the Professional Responsibility course. While attending to the Model Rules and the disciplinary process, Cases and Materials on the Law Governing Lawyers allows treatment of a wider range of sources of the law that governs lawyer conduct than the ethics codes and a wider range of control devices than the disciplinary process. The result is a more dynamic set of materials that presents a picture of the constraints on lawyer conduct that is closer to the realities of practice.

Cases and Materials on the Law Governing Lawyers presents the material in a manner similar to the presentation of the material in other mainstream law courses: the law governing lawyers is just that, law, and students seem to respect the course's place in the curriculum when the materials are presented as such. In most other courses, the law studied affects client conduct; the lawyer interacts with it as an expert, a step removed from the law's application. Not so in the Professional Responsibility course, in which the law is about the lawyer's conduct and relationships. Students find motivation for the course when they recognize this simple insight.

The Third Edition of this casebook adds approximately 20 problem scenarios, incorporates the significant changes in the February 2002, Ethics 2000 Commission-inspired amendments to the Model Rules, and adds materials on both multidisciplinary and multijurisdictional practice. As an aid to those teaching the casebook in New York and California, the appendix includes the New York Code of Professional Responsibility and the California Rules of Professional Conduct.