PLA3703: Ethics

The core duties, each of which has a rule number and a body of case law behind it.

• Competence — including, in the current rules, technological competence.
• Confidentiality — ⚠ broader than attorney–client privilege and constantly confused with it. Privilege is an evidentiary rule protecting certain communications from compelled disclosure; the duty of confidentiality covers everything relating to the representation, from any source, and applies always. Disclosing that a person is a client can itself be a breach.
• Conflicts of interest — ⚠⚠ and this is where paralegals create real problems. A paralegal who moves between firms carries imputed conflicts, and a firm may be disqualified from a matter because of a paralegal's prior employment. Screening — the "ethical wall" — is the remedy, and it must be set up before the problem, not after.
• Fees and client funds — ⚠ trust accounting is the single most common source of attorney discipline in Florida, and a paralegal frequently handles the records. Client money never mixes with firm money, and the records must be exact.
• Candour to the tribunal, fairness to opposing parties, and the duty not to assist a client in fraud.
• Advertising and solicitation rules.
• Supervision, and the reporting obligations when misconduct is observed.

⚠⚠ And running through all of it: the unlicensed practice of law. In Florida, UPL is a criminal offence (Chapter 454, Florida Statutes) and The Florida Bar investigates and prosecutes it. A paralegal may research, draft for attorney review, interview, organise and explain procedures. A paralegal may not give legal advice, accept a case, set a fee, appear for a client, or tell someone what the law means for their situation.

⚠ The line is crossed most easily in ordinary conversation — a client asking "what should I do?", a friend asking about a lease, a family member asking about a will. Learning to redirect that comfortably and without seeming unhelpful is a specific professional skill, and this course is where it is practised.

Learning Outcomes

Required Outcomes

• Explain the structure of the American legal system and the regulation of the legal profession.
• Explain the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct and their adoption as the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar.
• Explain Rule 5.3 and the supervising attorney's responsibility for non-lawyer assistants.
• ⚠ Explain the boundary between permitted paralegal work and the unlicensed practice of law, and identify UPL in fact patterns.
• Explain the duty of competence, including technological competence.
• ⚠ Distinguish the duty of confidentiality from attorney–client privilege, and explain the scope of each.
• Identify conflicts of interest, including imputed conflicts arising from a paralegal's prior employment.
• Explain screening procedures and when they are required.
• Explain the rules governing fees, client funds and trust accounting.
• Explain the duties of candour to the tribunal and fairness to opposing parties.
• Explain the rules on advertising and solicitation.
• Explain the obligation to report misconduct and its limits.
• ⚠ Research an ethics question using the rules, comments, ethics opinions and disciplinary decisions.
• Analyse an ethical dilemma systematically — identify the rule, the facts that matter, the options and their consequences.
• Explain the disciplinary process for attorneys in Florida and the consequences of violations.
• Explain paralegal professional association codes — NALA and NFPA — and how they relate to the binding rules.
• Explain the Florida Registered Paralegal programme and its requirements.
• Apply ethical rules to technology use — email, cloud storage, metadata, social media.
• Explain pro bono obligations and access-to-justice issues.
• Communicate an ethics analysis in writing.

Optional Outcomes

• Explain ethics in specific practice areas — criminal defence, family law, immigration, personal injury.
• Explain malpractice liability and its relationship to ethics violations.
• Explain limited-scope representation and its ethical framework.
• Explain legal ethics theory — the adversary system and the lawyer's role.
• Explain corporate and government legal ethics.
• Explain e-discovery obligations and spoliation.
• Explain diversity and bias obligations in professional conduct.
• Analyse published disciplinary opinions in depth.

Major Topics

Required Topics

• The legal system and regulation of the profession.
• The ABA Model Rules and the Florida Rules.
• The paralegal's role and Rule 5.3.
• Unlicensed practice of law.
• Competence.
• Confidentiality and privilege.
• Conflicts of interest and screening.
• Fees, client funds and trust accounting.
• Candour and fairness.
• Advertising and solicitation.
• Reporting misconduct.
• Researching ethics questions.
• The disciplinary process.
• Paralegal association codes and credentials.
• Technology and ethics.
• Case analysis and dilemma resolution.

Optional Topics

• Practice-area-specific ethics.
• Malpractice.
• Limited-scope representation.
• Theory of the adversary system.
• In-house and government ethics.
• E-discovery and spoliation.
• Bias and professionalism obligations.
• Access to justice.

Resources & Tools

• Textbooks: Cannon, Ethics and Professional Responsibility for Paralegals — ⚠ the standard text in paralegal programmes; Orlik, Ethics for the Legal Professional; Statsky and other paralegal series volumes.
• ⚠⚠ The primary sources are free and are what you will actually consult in practice: the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct, free with their official comments at americanbar.org; ⚠ the Rules Regulating The Florida Bar, free at floridabar.org, which are the binding authority in this state — the Model Rules are a model; Florida's version is the law; and Chapter 454, Florida Statutes on unlicensed practice.
• ⚠ The Florida Bar's Ethics Opinions and its Ethics Hotline — free, searchable, and the answer to most real questions. Knowing that ethics opinions exist and how to search them is a genuine professional skill and one this course should install. Disciplinary opinions are published by the Florida Supreme Court.
• Paralegal-specific: ⚠ The Florida Bar's chapter on paralegals and its Florida Registered Paralegal programme; NALA's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility and NFPA's Model Code — ⚠ note that these are professional association codes, not binding law; the binding rules run through the supervising attorney.
• Research platforms: Westlaw, Lexis, Fastcase or Google Scholar for disciplinary case law.
• Technology guidance: ⚠ the ABA's opinions on cloud storage, metadata and email security, and the Florida Bar's technology continuing-education requirement — Florida was among the first states to require technology CLE for attorneys, which tells you how seriously it is taken here.

Career Pathways

⚠ This course is not a career in itself; it is the requirement that makes every paralegal job safe to do. Destinations mirror the field generally:

• Paralegals and legal assistants (SOC 23-2011) — law firms, corporate legal departments, government, courts and nonprofits.
• Compliance officers (SOC 13-1041) — ⚠ ethics and rule-research skills transfer directly, and compliance frequently pays better than entry-level paralegal work.
• Contract administrators (SOC 13-1041).
• Court administration and clerks (SOC 43-4031).
• Legal operations and law firm administration (SOC 11-1021, 13-1111).
• Risk management (SOC 13-1151, 11-3031).
• Law school (SOC 23-1011) — ⚠ and a specific note: the course's content is examined again as the MPRE, the multistate professional responsibility examination required for bar admission. Learning it now is not wasted.
• Legal technology and e-discovery (SOC 23-2011, 15-1299).

⚠⚠ Character and fitness, stated plainly. Bar admission requires a character and fitness review, and academic integrity findings are disclosed and examined. Employers in law also conduct background checks, and law firms are unusually sensitive to integrity questions because their own licences depend on it. This is the course in which that fact is worth internalising.

Special Information

⚠⚠ Unlicensed practice — the competency this course exists for

• In Florida, UPL is a criminal offence under Chapter 454, and The Florida Bar investigates it.
• Permitted with attorney supervision: research, drafting for review, witness interviews, file and discovery organisation, exhibit preparation, and explaining procedures.
• ⚠⚠ Not permitted: giving legal advice, accepting a case, setting a fee, appearing in court for a client, or telling a client what the law means for their situation.
• ⚠ The risk rises with competence. An experienced paralegal usually knows the answer — and is no more permitted to give it. The correct response is to take the question to the attorney and return with their answer, attributed to them.
• Identification. ⚠ A paralegal must not be held out as a lawyer, must identify their status in dealings with clients and third parties, and must not sign correspondence in a way that implies otherwise. Business cards, email signatures and voicemail greetings are all covered.

Prerequisites and position in the curriculum

• FGCU requires PLA 1003 and (PLA 3116 or PLA 4116) — introduction to law plus legal research or writing. ⚠ The research prerequisite is well matched: this course teaches you to RESEARCH an ethics question, which assumes you can already research.
• UWF lists no prerequisite, though the 3000-level number places it within the paralegal sequence.
• ⚠ Take it EARLY in the programme, not late. Ethics governs everything you will do in an internship or a job, and students frequently begin working in law offices while still studying. A student who meets the confidentiality and UPL rules after starting work has already been exposed.

Course format and workload

3 credits, 45 contact hours — lecture and discussion, three hours per week. UWF notes it may not be repeated for credit.

Expect 5–8 hours per week outside class. ⚠ FGCU's description names "examples and group participation", which is characteristic: this course is taught through fact patterns and discussion, because the rules are short and applying them is the difficulty.

Assessment typically includes examinations with issue-spotting questions, written ethics analyses of hypothetical situations, an ethics research assignment, and participation. ⚠ The research assignment is the professionally useful one — it teaches you where to look when it is real.

⚠ Where students struggle

• ⚠⚠ Confusing confidentiality with privilege. The characteristic error. Privilege is narrow, evidentiary, and has exceptions; confidentiality is broad, ethical, and applies from the first conversation whether or not the person becomes a client.
• Spotting conflicts. ⚠ Especially imputed ones. A paralegal who worked at a firm representing one side, and now works at the firm on the other, is a conflict — and it can disqualify the whole firm. This must be disclosed at hiring, not discovered later.
• Recognising UPL in ordinary situations. The obvious cases are easy; ⚠ the hard ones are the friend at a party and the client on the phone when the attorney is out.
• Wanting a rule for every case. ⚠ Many situations require judgement, and the professional answer is often "ask the supervising attorney" or "research the ethics opinion" — which is not evasion; it is the correct procedure.
• Separating ethics from personal morality. ⚠ The rules sometimes require conduct a student finds uncomfortable — maintaining the confidence of a client who has done something terrible, or working diligently for a party you would not choose. The adversary system's justification is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing, and the course should make the argument rather than assert the rule.
• Technology. ⚠ The rules are the same and the ways to breach them are new: metadata in a document sent to opposing counsel, a case discussed on social media, client files in an unsecured cloud account, a conversation overheard on a speakerphone.

Articulation and transfer

The number PLA3703 is used at the institutions carrying it and SCNS articulation is clean; only the titles drift.

⚠ The practical issue is programme approval rather than credit. ABA approval attaches to a paralegal programme, and ethics is a required component of any approved one — so a receiving programme will evaluate the syllabus against its own requirements. Keep it.

Prefix note. PLA is paralegal studies; BUL business law; CCJ/CJL criminal justice and criminal law; PHI philosophy; POS political science. ⚠⚠ A general ethics course under PHI is NOT a substitute — it teaches moral philosophy, not the Rules of Professional Conduct — and paralegal programmes do not accept it for this requirement. Search by subject and confirm with the programme.

⚠ Florida College System institutions teach paralegal studies extensively at the A.S. level, and A.S.-to-B.A.S. articulation is well established. Work with an advisor.

AI Integration

⚠⚠ Legal ethics and AI is not a hypothetical topic in this course — it is the most active area of professional responsibility right now, and the failures are documented in court records.

The rules that apply, and they already exist:

• Competence — ⚠ the duty now expressly includes keeping abreast of the benefits and risks of relevant technology. That cuts both ways: refusing to understand the tools is itself a competence question, and using them without understanding them plainly is.
• Confidentiality — ⚠⚠ entering client information into a general-purpose tool is a disclosure. Firms have policies; follow them exactly, and assume the answer is no unless the tool is one the firm has approved and contracted for.
• Supervision (Rule 5.3) — ⚠ the attorney is responsible for work product regardless of what produced it. "The software wrote it" is not a defence and has not been accepted as one.
• Candour to the tribunal — ⚠⚠ filing a document containing fabricated citations is a candour violation.
• Fees — billing a client for time not spent because a task was automated raises a separate question that bar associations are actively addressing.

⚠⚠⚠ The concrete failure this course must cover. Attorneys in multiple US jurisdictions have been sanctioned for filing briefs citing cases that do not exist, generated by a chatbot and not verified. ⚠ The cases had plausible names, plausible reporters, plausible holdings and plausible quotations. Sanctions have included fines, mandatory education, referral to disciplinary authorities and public opinions naming the lawyers.

The paralegal's position in that failure is worth being precise about. ⚠⚠ A paralegal asked to check citations who does not actually pull the cases has failed at the one task standing between the firm and a sanction. Verification means reading the opinion, not confirming the case exists. A real case with a wrong holding attached is more dangerous than an invented one, because it survives an existence check.

Where the tools are legitimately used: retrieval-grounded legal research inside Westlaw or Lexis, e-discovery review, document drafting for attorney review, deposition summarisation, and citation formatting. ⚠ All of it under supervision and all of it verified.

⚠ One more ethical dimension the course should name: a chatbot answering a member of the public's legal question raises the same UPL issue this course teaches about paralegals — and a paralegal who passes on model-generated legal analysis to a client has given legal advice, whoever composed the words.

Academic integrity. Follow the course policy. ⚠⚠ In this course, the professional analogue of academic dishonesty is a disciplinary referral — and bar admission and law-firm employment both involve character review in which academic findings are disclosed and examined. Of all the courses in a paralegal programme, this is the one where the point makes itself.