Jack Marshall Makes Legal Ethics Entertaining

Few subjects seem as humorless as legal ethics, right?  Wrong, according to Jack Marshall, a former practicing attorney who left his legal career to launch ProEthics, Ltd., an Alexandria, Virginia-based training and consulting firm that uses drama and humor to make learning legal ethics entertaining and engaging. In a Washington Post profile, Marshall explained his approach: "The whole point is to put people at ease, so they're not just sitting back and falling asleep."

What started as a side job for Marshall about 15 years ago, writing sketches for another training business, has bloomed into ProEthics, which Marshall has been operating full time since 2002. ProEthics conducts entertaining CLE courses, as well as programs on business ethics and sexual harassment issues, for law firms, private companies, government agencies, and bar associations all over the United States.  Drawing upon his legal experience and his longtime interest in the theater, Marshall uses music, humor, history, drama, and popular culture to make the study of ethics more enjoyable.  He conducts the seminars himself and hires local actors and singers to help present the programs.  His courses have earned the praise of Lalla Shishkevish, the D.C. Bar's director of continuing legal education, who remarked, "He makes people have to think and participate, but always in a way that's entertaining." (Marshall also publishes the Ethics Scoreboard - an entertaining analysis of ethical gaffes in the public domain). 

Marshall says the full time business has generated enough profit "to support him, his wife, Grace, and their 13-year-old son, Grant."  That's great news for a lawyer who makes his living making ethics more entertaining for the rest of us.

By Steve Imparl, guest blogger

Comments

[bVisual]

This sounds like an awesome learning opportunity. I find that I learn so much more when I can be excited about the materials presented. It makes sense to teach this way. Way to go! I hope the concept catches on.

When you can't be there, bVisual.