How Legal-Education Changes Lawyers

This research will examine the intimate link between values, professionalization and ethical decision making using tools developed in social psychology to examine whether values differ at different stages of legal education. Are law students entering into legal education fonder of pro-social values than those ending their education and going into practice? Are they more or less prone to take ethically questionable decisions? The use of a standardized instruments for assessment of personal values developed by Shalom Schwartz allows comparisons to be made not only between different legal educational institutions in different countries through our survey work but will also facilitate a comparison between law students and the general population using European Social Survey Data.5 In doing so, it will examine whether law school selects students who are already predisposed through their personal values to less ethical behavior. This research will also result in a survey instrument which may have a wide range of uses, not limited to a legal setting. The development of a standardized instrument for the examination of personal values, ethical decision making, professionalization and moral licensing may serve as a tool to examine institutional corruption in a wide range of situations.