Following up on Thursday's post, Stanford Law School Promised Free Speech Training. It Delivered A Campus Joke.: Steve Lubet (Northwestern), Law Students and Ethics:
A recent article in the Washington Free Beacon describes Stanford Law School's "mandatory half-day training session on 'freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession'" as a "campus joke." According to the Free Beacon,
[T]he promised training wasn't much of a crash course in free speech. Instead, it was an online program that required barely a minute's effort, according to five people who completed the training as well as screenshots and recordings reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. Students were given six weeks to watch five prerecorded videos, most about an hour long, then asked to sign a form attesting that they had done so.
The videos could be played on mute, and the form—which could be accessed without opening the training—did not ask any questions about their content, letting students tune out the modules or skip them entirely.
More worrisome was the shameless response of at least one Stanford law student:
"I watched none of the videos," one student said. "I never even opened the links. On the day the training was due, I went to the attestation link provided by the university, checked a box confirming I watched the videos, and that was the end of the matter. Whole process took 10 seconds."
Signing a false attestation is among the most serious ethical offenses a lawyer can commit. Bragging makes it worse.
If such conduct is widespread at Stanford, the law school is facing a profound problem. The response to a vapid requirement cannot be lying about completing it. Students who are concerned about mandated law school programs must still complete them; the remedy is complaining or reporting (including anonymously), not falsifying. …
[T]he Stanford administration should immediately take steps to determine, if possible, how many students submitted the attestation without viewing the training. If nothing else, the entire Stanford student body should be cautioned that false attestation is an honor code violation. Far from a joking matter, similar conduct among lawyers would lead to professional discipline.
