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Author Topic: On the ethics of choosing a career
prowsej
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posted 15 May 2008 05:14 PM      Profile for prowsej   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Under a utilitarian ethical framework, we're obligated to maximize general welfare with each of our decisions. I'll likely be starting law school this fall.

My decision is that I could study internet law and I'm sure that I'd find it interesting. To be like Geist or Lessig. But my dilemma is whether this would satisfy the ethical obligations that are incumbent upon me when compared with the option to study a type of law - be it human rights, poverty, or environmental - that arguably has the potential to realize results that are more significant.

My question is whether it can be ethical to study internet law, and more generally, whether you have thoughts on the ethics of choosing a career.

Thank you.


From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
SavageInTheCity
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posted 15 May 2008 06:11 PM      Profile for SavageInTheCity     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What pays most?
From: INAC's Showcase | Registered: Jan 2006  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
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posted 15 May 2008 06:45 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Hey, it's great to see both of you!
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
unionist
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posted 15 May 2008 06:48 PM      Profile for unionist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Michelle, please check your PMs. Thank you.
From: Vote QS! | Registered: Dec 2005  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 15 May 2008 06:52 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't have PMS, and I strongly resent your implication that...

...oh never mind. Lame, lame.

prowsej, do what you need to do to pay your student loans, as long as you're not actively working for The Bad Guys. I mean, there are certain lines that shouldn't be crossed, and crossing them means selling out.

But you can save the world much easier if you have enough to eat.


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
prowsej
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posted 15 May 2008 07:00 PM      Profile for prowsej   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Thanks. It's nice to see that all the old faces here are still posting strong.
quote:
What pays most?
Hmmm....maybe NAFTA Ch. 11 litigation against the Canadian government on behalf of US corporations that want our environmental protections to be considered 'tantamount to expropriation'? : )

From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
triciamarie
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posted 16 May 2008 05:05 PM      Profile for triciamarie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Maybe you can find a way to do both. Osgoode puts on a public interest law symposium for first year students every year -- maybe something in government or international aid will catch your eye? Otherwise, I also know a couple of guys who do mainly worker-side workers' compensation but who pay the bills with a real estate practice. Real estate's not that complicated so they can maintain their level of competence in both areas.
From: gwelf | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
mahmud
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posted 16 May 2008 05:42 PM      Profile for mahmud     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Most government (state) careers are unethical. From welfare workers who upholds and enforce policies they know well are unfair, discriminatory or oppressive to police officers who handcuff mentally ill, poor and homeless people and take them to jail instead of mental health facilities, to judges to accept such practices, to top public servants who acquiesce to building jails rather than social and health services infrastructure, to the bureaucrat who works on th premise that citizens have no right to know and providing them information is the exception not the rule (contrary to Access to Info law) to the government lawyer who defends firing whistle blowers and help cover up corruption [URL=http://fairwhistleblower.ca/fair/about_us.html]like here[/URL] etcetera etcetera.

Working for the state puts one in a situation where if not directly involved in unethical practices, one is most likely to witness such practices and whether to choose between the job and one's conscience is the question.

[ 16 May 2008: Message edited by: mahmud ]


From: Nepean | Registered: May 2008  |  IP: Logged
prowsej
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posted 16 May 2008 05:46 PM      Profile for prowsej   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
FAIR's an interesting organization; I'd never heard of it before.
From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 16 May 2008 05:47 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by prowsej:
My question is whether it can be ethical to study internet law, and more generally, whether you have thoughts on the ethics of choosing a career.
Studying something is hardly ever "unethical".

You can study internet law all you like without violating any ethical codes. The ethics comes into play when you decide what you are going to do with all that knowledge.

Every legal dispute has at least two sides. If the dispute involves internet law, you could be acting for the angels or the forces of evil. And you can't really decide, before you even go to law school, which side you will find yourself on. Many progressive people for example approach law school with a determination to study and practice labour law; when they graduate they find pro-union jobs are hard to get and they end up doing management-side labour, or something completely unrelated.

Remember, studying internet law or labour law or aerospace law, or any of the other legal specialties at the undergraduate level means taking at most perhaps two or three courses in it in three years. The vast majority of the time you are learning the same stuff as everyone else. So you can forget about having to make a choice of career specialty before you start law school.

Very few lawyers actually end up in the kind of practice they imagined they would. I'm pretty sure, for example, that Michael Geist didn't plan to be an internet specialist when he started law school. Just go with the flow, and do what you like to do for as long as you can do it.

Oh, and you can forget about changing the world through practising law. Sorry.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
prowsej
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posted 16 May 2008 06:18 PM      Profile for prowsej   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Looking at the biographies of some of my professors I think that you can change the world with a lawyer's pen, viz.:
quote:
Dr. Michael M'Gonigle is the Eco-Research Chair in Environmental Law and Policy at the University of Victoria, and is cross-appointed between the School of Environmental Studies and the Faculty of Law. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace International, SmartGrowth BC, Forest Futures (Dogwood Initiative) and a founding co-director of the Sierra Legal Defense Fund. When he was Chair of the Board of Greenpeace Canada in the early 1990s, he initiated the Greenpeace forest campaign. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he worked in international environmental law, leading the Greenpeace team that led to the global moratorium on whaling. In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked in the wilderness movement in British Columbia, leading a 12-year campaign that resulted in Class A park status for the Stein River Valley northeast of Vancouver. He continues to work on forestry issues, most recently as a member of the Legal Mechanisms Experts Team devising innovative legal mechanisms for aboriginal and community-based management of British Columbia’s Central and North Coasts.

From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
triciamarie
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posted 18 May 2008 11:26 AM      Profile for triciamarie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by mahmud:
Working for the state puts one in a situation where if not directly involved in unethical practices, one is most likely to witness such practices and whether to choose between the job and one's conscience is the question.

In my own experience, that theory does not hold water. There are no conspiracies lurking in my ministry. There are certainly cost constraints, but my colleagues and I are totally free to discuss cost issues with those who receive our services, and as much as possible we can try to distribute our resources fairly. I am proud to say that I believe I have accomplished more toward public access to justice as a government employee than I ever could have conceived of working outside the system.


From: gwelf | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
prowsej
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posted 18 May 2008 03:07 PM      Profile for prowsej   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Where do you work? Federal or Provincial? Which ministry?
From: Ottawa ON | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
triciamarie
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posted 18 May 2008 05:01 PM      Profile for triciamarie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I work in the agencies, boards and tribunals sector, currently with Labour -- provincial.
From: gwelf | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged

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