Interactive scenarios
We have developed a series of interactive scenarios in partnership with the University of Queensland's Centre for Biological Information Technology (and other partners on a scenario by scenario basis) to give lawyers and law students an opportunity to engage on-line and try to resolve some real world ethical dilemmas that arise in the every day practice of law - and to give potential complainants an opportunity to 'track' an imaginary complaint and so learn how the Commission deals with complaints.
We encourage you to use the scenarios – whether you are a lawyer, legal or other academic, law or other student, legal consumer or member of the public more generally - but ask you please to give us your feedback. You can do that on-line and entirely anonymously and it will help us assess just how useful the scenarios are and how we might improve them. Simply click on the link to the on-line evaluation survey (below) and tell us what you think.
Go to explanatory notes
Go straight to scenarios
Go to the evaluation survey
Explanatory notes to ethical scenarios:
The Centre for Biological Information Technology at the University of Queensland (CBIT) has developed an interactive scenario or problem-based learning software package (PBLi) in conjunction with Massey University in New Zealand.
PBLi has been used in a wide range of applications. It has been used to allow horticultural scientists, farmers and students, for example, to engage on-line with complex real world problems such as the emergence of pests and diseases in crops and to diagnose the specific problem and work out how best to resolve it. It has also been applied to the sorts of real world problems that are encountered by social workers, engineers and medical practitioners among others. The scenario based learning interactive site can be accesses at this address: http://www.sblinteractive.org/
We've applied the software to the sorts of real world problems encountered by lawyers. We wanted to explore new and interesting ways to sensitise law students and lawyers to the problems that are the stuff of everyday complaints to the Commission and generally to promote discussion about the sorts of ethical issues that arise in the daily practice of law.
Note: you will need to have your computer display setting on a resolution of at least 1024 x 768 pixels to view these scenarios. Go to Start / My computer / Control panel / Display / Settings where you will see ‘screen resolution’. Slide the bar from ‘less’ to ‘more’ to at least 1024 x 768 pixels. Click here for a screen shot.
Ethical scenarios:
Elder law:
Interact with Elder law scenario Part 1.
Interact with Elder law scenario Part 2.
Interact with Elder law scenario Part 3 - the complaints process.
We undertook this project collaboratively with the CBIT, the Guardianship and Administration Tribunal and the Elder Law sub-committee of the Queensland Law Society.
Parts 1 and 2 seek to sensitise practitioners to some common but difficult dilemmas that arise in the course of providing legal services to older people and people who may have cognitive impairments and to engage them in finding solutions.
Part 3 continues the story, but also stands alone. It allows legal consumers and practitioners alike to explore how the Commission deals with complaints. It tracks how the Commission deals with a complaint about the practitioner involved in Parts 1 and 2 and illustrates four possible outcomes, depending on how the practitioner chooses to respond to the complaint. It includes links to other useful resources on the Commission's website and replicas of the sorts of letters the Commission sends to complainants and practitioners every day.
Ethical issues in legal practice:
Interact with ethical issues.
We undertook this project collaboratively with the CBIT and the Queensland University of Technology Faculty of Law which wanted to explore how to teach professional responsibility and ethics to law students in ways that engage them with ethical problems not only cognitively but also affectively.
The scenario describes some ethical dilemmas of a kind that lawyers encounter everyday in their real-world practice of law and that find their way to the Commission in the form of complaints.