In a professional responsibility course, students learn the basics about their ethical duties as lawyers. Most students take the course in their third year and, by this point, the students will have learned how to read appellate opinions and apply them and will be able to distinguish cases and make analogies. Unlike new law students, third-year students have little to gain from extended Socratic dialogue about reported cases. Indeed, because third-year students have mastered the basic skills of legal analysis, they often find such dialogue tiresome. Therefore, the teacher must find another way to engage these students.

The most significant demographic trends in the United States reflect the “greying” of our population. In 1900 3.1 million Americans (4 percent of the population) were over the age of 65. In 1998 the figure increased to 34.4 million. By 2010 the number of Americans over the age of 65 is expected to increase to 40.1 million, almost 13.3 percent of the nation’s total population, and in 2030 that percentage is projected to rise to 20.1 percent. Moreover, the proportion of those over eighty-five years old is increasing even faster. The entrance of the “baby boom” generation into the ranks of the retired will produce what President William Jefferson Clinton has called “one of the central challenges of the coming century.” The need for legal services for the elderly is, of course, great. Although very large numbers of older Americans are impoverished, many others have net worths above the national average. In 1998 approximately 43 percent of family households with a head of household over the age of 65 had incomes in excess of $35,000 annually. These middle- and upper-class individuals require the assistance of lawyers in many issues of traditional family law – premarital agreements, support, custody, visitation – as well as sophisticated and detailed financial planning.

Florida’s cities and counties must maneuver through a minefield of options and legal limitations when they search for ways to fund capital improvements, general services, and unfunded mandates passed down from the state legislature and Congress. Although the 1968 revision of Florida’s Constitution granted counties and municipalities the exclusive power to levy property (ad valorem) taxes on real and personal property, that power has been diluted by a myriad of property tax exemptions and constitutional amendments, which limit millage rates and assessments. Sixteen counties can no longer raise property tax rates, because their current rates have reached the constitutionally imposed limit of one percent. The task of raising revenues at the local level is further complicated by a population that has made its anti-tax sentiment clear, while demanding improved schools, lower crime rates, better roads, and more responsive social services.