MPRE Guy, I Have a Question

This weekend, I attended the MPRE practice class in anticipation of next week's exam. Because they test ethics and professional responsibility, I will undoubtedly fail.

I was understandably shocked when I learned that all lawyers were tested for ethics before they were allowed to practice law. To me, that's like requiring chefs to go to fat camp.

The class was helpful, I suppose, although it can hardly be described as a class. It consisted of watching a four hour video. This video featured a man in a vaguely threatening Irish accent lecturing on ethics and prompting us to fill in the blanks of previously prepared outline. It was about as exciting as watching curling.

(I made that joke because it will be the last time we get to make fun of curling for four years.)

The format of the class -- watching a four hour video instead of having some guy come in and actually teach us -- was doubly startling for the following reason. It seems that BarBri, which will teach us law for the Bar exam, follows pretty much the same format. This summer, I will go to the tower of terror every day to watch a four hour video. For this privilege, I will pay BarBri $3,300. I can scarcely contain my joy. Being a lawyer better be awesome.

Why am I upset that nobody was there to actually take questions from the audience?

Quite simply, because I'd love to become acquainted with ethics. I think I've said it before -- it would be like learning a language I will never use, but would love to occasionally recognize. Think how the few people who still speak Latin feel when they watch The Da Vinci Code. I'd love to feel smug like that.

More importantly, there are actual questions that I would like to have answered. Important questions that only MPRE Guy can answer.

Like, can I sleep with my client? I imagine the answer is no, but let me finish.

For instance, what if she initiates it? Is it OK then? And what if she's really hot? Like, I-would-be-out-of-my-mind-to-say-no hot? All my friends would make fun of me and I'd hate myself forever for rejecting her hot? What if she's the love of my life and now I'll never know because I didn't sleep with her? Can I live with that knowledge?

Let's talk scenarios: What if she says, I won't give you the information you seek until you sleep with me? As a lawyer, I'm supposed to extract the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? So wouldn't I, in fact, be shirking my duty by refusing to accommodate her requests?

What if she initiates, I say no, and then she fires me and says she's going to hire a lawyer who I know for a fact is terrible, and because of this she will go to jail? In this case, not only do I cause her to be disappointed because she didn't get to sleep with me, but then she also goes to jail because of it. Can I do that to her and feel OK with myself?

What if she fires me for twenty minutes and then hires me back afterwards? Then can I sleep with her? Perhaps that would create too much pressure -- if I fail to satisfy her expectations, then she might be less inclined to re-hire me. But that probably wouldn't happen. And what's life without these challenges, dammit?

What if I sleep with her completely by accident? Say, for example, that I trip and I fall, and I fall in such a way that my clothes come off, and when I land, I land on her, and the method of my landing is such that her clothes come off as well, and ten minutes later, oh wow, that just happened. It was completely unintentional, in other words. So what happens then? Am I still in trouble?

I literally have thousands of questions like these. And I haven't even broached the topic of sleeping with judges, bailiffs, clerks, probation officers, opposing counsel, opposing parties, and criminal defendants. Not at the same time,of course -- I'm not that deranged. The possibilities, however, are truly endless.

In retrospect, I'm glad that nobody was around to answer all these questions. It's for the best.