Meta-Ethical Competence as a Lawyer Skill: Variant Ethics Affecting Lawyer and Client Decision-Making

Abstract:     
Lawyers benefit by developing skill in recognizing their own worldview, perspective, or ethic, and recognizing those held by their clients and others. Lawyers are more effective when they possess and exercise a meta-ethical competence, meaning the ability to see how their clients and others are using worldviews to make decisions. Lawyers can give better advice and support to clients when drawing on, mediating, and re-mediating client ethics. Moral, pragmatic, therapeutic, probabilistic, spiritual, instrumental, and other philosophies, habits, or perspectives can each have their own benefit in different circumstances. Law schools should teach recognition of variant ethics.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 20

Keywords: variation, ethics, worldview, perspective, practice, advice, advise, counsel, skill, meta, instruct, teach

Accepted Paper Series