Human Rights Code of Conduct II, the Sequel

By Lauren E. Bartlett

Just over a year ago I posted about developing a human rights code of conduct for legal aid and other nonprofit offices. I first developed the idea of a human rights code of conduct as the Director of the Local Human Rights Lawyering Project at the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law at American University Washington College of Law. One of the goals of that project was to apply human rights principles to the interactions between colleagues at legal aid organizations, and also between staff and clients.  I developed a human rights code which was described in my previous post, and then later assisted Maryland Legal Aid and the Center for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law in developing their own human rights codes (e.g. Maryland Legal Aid Guiding Principles). Those human rights codes were mean to provide an ambitious and aspirational guide for behavior.  The codes were meant to go above and beyond the rules of professional conduct, and were directed at individuals, as opposed to the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, which are directed at businesses and states.

Today I want to share with you a new development. This semester I had my clinic students develop their own human rights code of conduct for our in-house civil litigation and transactional clinics.  This is actually quite a feat.  None of my students had taken an international law or human rights class in law school.  Moreover, I teach at one of the most conservative law schools in the U.S.  This is also my first year directing and teaching here at ONU, so most of you know how overwhelmed I may or may not be. Here is what my students came up with:

Human Rights Principles for the ONU Legal Clinic

Openness

• Be open and understanding of every client’s diverse background, experiences, and legal issues.
• Promote transparency in the attorney-client relationship.
• Make sure that every client has access to their attorney and the knowledge and information they can provide.

Equality

• Treat everyone as an equal.
• All persons shall be afforded the right and opportunity to legal representation.
• Acknowledge and accept differences regardless of race, culture, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, marital status, disability, gender, age and political affiliation. 

Integrity and Best Judgment 

• In order to preserve ethics, integrity shall be common to all.
• Strive to embody the integrity that all people should possess.
• Be honest with the court, client, colleagues, and opposing counsel.
• In representing a client, take the same care and caution that you would when dealing with your own affairs.

Dignity and Respect

• Treat persons as equals and respect them, their experiences and beliefs, and their wishes.
• Treat all persons justly and fairly because they are human beings.
• Treat the problems of others with dignity.
• Remember the humility that is required to take your personal decisions and problems before another person for assistance.

Kindness

• Treat others the way you would want to be treated.  
• View your relationship with clients and colleagues as a valuable asset.  
• Commit yourself to being considerate of all persons and problems. 

Empowerment

• Let others know that their thoughts and feelings matter, and that they are being heard.
• Timely provide each client with the necessary information they need in order to make an informed decision.   
• Engage in co-operative decision making with the client, and make sure that the client remains informed and involved throughout the process.

In terms of what prompted the students to produce these principles, I choose one of our first rounds sessions to begin this exercise. I started by giving my students a brief lecture on the human rights framework and human rights law. Next, I introduced this exercise by telling them that I wanted them to draft a human rights code of conduct for the clinic, which I explained to be a set of principles to guide their work with each other, with their professors, with the courts, with the public, and with clients in the clinic. I gave them each a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we had a discussion about what were some of the major themes that stood out for them as applicable to student and supervisor behavior in clinic. We then had a discussion about how to describe the ideal behavior for a student attorney in clinic using language from the rules of professional responsibility. 

I then had the students individually write down on a Post-It what they thought was the most important principle for a successful client-staff relationship. I told them to stick the Post-It on a wall and try to organize the Post-Its according to theme or principle.  On their own,  they came up with the six headings of “Openness”, “Equality”, “Integrity and Best Judgement”, “Dignity and Respect”, “Kindness” and “Empowerment”.   I then had them break out into teams based on the six headings and had them  brainstorm together about how to describe the ideal behavior for a student attorney in clinic using human rights terms. I then directed the students to refer to their copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to ask me any questions that they had.  

They ended up with the above set of principles after a few hours of group brainstorming and drafting, and then a few weeks of back and forth editing over the course of the semester to finalize the principles. Ideally, the Human Rights Principles for the ONU Legal Clinic would have been posted at their workstations, in the clinic lobby and in our supervisors’ offices, the idea being that the students would be reminded of these Principles wherever they went in clinic and that clients could also read the Principles and help keep us accountable.  This semester we did not actually get around to posting the Principles, for a variety of outside reasons, though I did refer to them during supervision, rounds and during our clinic evaluation conversations.

The Human Rights Principles were more important and more meaningful for some students than others. Some students talked about the drafting process and the Principles on a weekly basis, and some never mentioned the Principles again. For me, I feel like this exercise was very important in terms of how I taught professionalism and ethics in the context of our live-client clinic, as well as how I integrated professionalism into our rounds discussions. I also constantly look for ways to talk with my students about the practical application of human rights here in the U.S., and this exercise provided a good opening for those discussions. At the very least I hope this exercise affirmed how students hope they interact with their colleagues and clients in the future, but it is my hope that the Principles actually helped students re-examine and reconfigure their aspirations in their roles as future attorneys.