Task Description Creative Challenge
Task Description Creative Challenge
Task Description
This assessment is designed to develop your creativity, challenge your personal moral beliefs and ability to locate and critique primary and secondary materials in relation to an ethical dilemma of your own creation. It also requires you to conduct a comparative analysis with a United States jurisdiction California or New York.
Your task is to prepare a visual scenario depicting an ethical issue related to legal work that you personally find morally repugnant. Your visual scenario may be presented as a:
Comic strip;
Animation (2d or 3d);
Infographic;
Storyboard for a scene in a film, including images; or
YouTube video of no more than 3 minutes duration.
Your visual scenario should be no more than the equivalent of 1000 words (most likely far less). It will be challenging to produce, so make sure you start early.
In addition to your visual scenario you are also asked to prepare a 1000 word written summary of the legal and ethical issues involved. As part of your summary discuss:
Why you find the instructions repugnant?
How you will deal with the issue depicted in your scenario in meeting your professional conduct obligations?
Critique the relevant Queensland professional rules (or lack thereof), case law and secondary literature concerning the ethical issue in your scenario.
Outline a brief comparative analysis of how your scenario would be dealt with in California or New York, USA.
Examples of legal work you may find repugnant may include, but are in no way limited to:
Formation of a corporation that promotes paedophilia.
Evicting a tenant, who is in hospital due to Covid 19, unable to work and pay the rent.
Creating a will that leaves all the assets to the old dogs home rather than to impoverished close relatives who have cared for the client for a long period.
Defending a person whom you believe, although not certain is guilty of manslaughter or murder.
Conducting a civil litigation for a mining corporation against an environmental organisation trying to save the Great Barrier Reef.
Defending a client who was forced out of necessity and to avoid starvation, killed and ate a fellow survivor of an accident at sea.
Defending a potential serial killer, who in interview with you disclosed the location of other victims.
A mortgagee exercising power of sale over a charities homeless shelter.
Defending an antivaxxer who knowingly while infected ran a Covid-19 party contrary to Public Health warnings.
Defending a famous tennis player who lied on their visa application to enter Australia to play in a tournament and have had their visa cancelled.
The assessment will be judged according to the requirements of the Legal Profession Act 2007 (Qld), the Legal Profession Regulation 2017 (Qld), the Australian Solicitors Conduct Rules 2012, case law and relevant literature (including a brief comparison with the relevant law in California or New York, USA.)
See - https://www.calbar.ca.gov/Attorneys/Conduct-Discipline/Rules - checked 30/01/23
See - https://nysba.org/attorney-resources/professional-standards/ - checked 30/01/23
Software which you may find useful in producing your visual presentation include, but are not limited to:
Comic:
http://comiclife.com (checked 30.1.23)
http://bitstrips.com (checked 30.1.23)
Animation/film:
Cartoon Animator 4 (checked 30.1.23)
Moho Debut 13.5 (checked 30.1.23)
Infographic
The Ultimate Guide to Infographic Design (checked 30.1.23)
Creative Blog 13 incredible tools for creating infographics (checked 30.1.23)
Automated Infographic design systems:
https://venngage.com (checked 30.1.23)
https://infogram.com (checked 30.1.23)
https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/ (checked 30.1.23)
https://piktochart.com (checked 30.1.23)
https://www.animaker.com - animated infographics (checked 30.1.23)
Storyboard
http://www.storyboardthat.com - includes image library (checked 30.1.23)
YouTube video
Adobe guide How to create and share a YouTube video (checked 30.1.23)
Camtasia (checked 30.1.23) + How to make a YouTube Video (Beginners Guide) (checked 30.1.23)
Animato (checked 30.1.23)
Why do we have a comparative laws element in our written assessment?
We live in a world of multiple jurisdictions where internationalisation is having a significant impact on Australia legal practice. Law schools and tertiary regulators recognise that legal education needs to be able to traverse multiple jurisdictions see Internationalising the Australian Law curriculum for enhanced global legal practice 2012 (checked 30.1.23)
Including comparative law elements within the law curriculum across the curriculum is known as the integration approach. This assessment in LAWS13013 Legal Professional Conduct is an example of this. California was chosen as it is a common jurisdiction where Australian lawyers seek admission to the US bar.
Why do we have a creative element as part of our written assessment?
Creativity is the ability to think and create something new or original. Creativity can be an innovation concerning an existing concept (e.g., new examples of the application of existing rules) or it could be an invention of something that doesnt already exist (e.g., a new situation, not covered by the rules, requiring a new rule).
To meet the challenge of artificial intelligence, lawyers need to become far more creative and distinguish their abilities from what otherwise can be done by software. Lack of creativity of lawyers is recognised in popular blogs as a problem for the profession:
Jeff Bennion, Can lawyers be creative? Above the law Nov 8, 2016 (checked 30.1.23)
Jill Switzer, Robots will never be creative as lawyers, Above the law Dec 6, 2017 (checked 30.1.23)
For those interested in some of the academic literature on why creative thinking is important to lawyers see:
Janet Weinstein and Linda Morton, Stuck in a rut: the role of creative thinking in problem solving and legal education (2003) 9 Clinical Law Review 835 (checked 30.1.23)
**We will be aiming to hold a visual (film, comic, animation, infographic etc) festival where students will be able to display their work online for their peers to view.
