University of Dayton School of Law Dean of Students Lori Shaw has been asked to speak at the American Bar Association’s midyear meeting in Miami, Florida this week on her series of articles that have appeared recently in Student Lawyer examining cheating in law school.

Shaw conducted a survey that garnered about 500 responses from around the country. She found that while 40% of undergraduates admit to having cheated before on an exam, only 2.3% of law students claim the same.

Shaw attributes the difference to a number of potential factors, but said that in many of the responses she received, law students placed an emphasis on their ethics-based training. “Law students should understand that they are studying to become defenders of justice,” wrote one of Shaw’s survey respondents.

“A funny thing happened on my way to writing a column on cheating on law school exams: I discovered just how passionately law students care about a little thing called integrity,” Shaw opened her February column in Student Lawyer.

While most schools have an honor code, Shaw said that professionalism should be given more attention in the law school curriculum, talked about by visiting attorneys and ABA members, and not just mentioned at orientation.

Students at UDSL are exposed to ethical issues regularly, from orientation to externship coursework to professional responsibility, and have opportunities to police themselves and their peers in exam situations and through Honor Council proceedings. “We ask them to police themselves, as they will when they’re in practice,” she said.