The University of Colorado Law School is pleased to announce the winners of the 2017 Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Colorado Law Ethics and Creative Problem Solving Writing Competition. The first-place winner is Michael Miller (’18). Shelby Krantz (’19) and Grace Jang (’20) tied for second place.
The competition consisted of a complex ethical scenario mimicking a real-world situation for which students provided recommendations and guidance from the perspective of a practicing lawyer. This year’s case problem dealt with the issue of abusive conduct in the workplace.
The case problem asked students to consider a hypothetical legal and ethical dilemma at a privately held hotel chain. The issue concerned potentially abusive conduct by a manager toward employees, along with possible retaliation issues. Students provided legal, ethical, and practical advice and solutions in the form of a written memorandum.
“Most ethical challenges in the real world force us to operate in the ‘gray areas’—there’s rarely an easy, obvious solution. This competition provides students with a unique opportunity to confront these types of ethical gray areas that often pop up in professional settings, pushing them to evaluate numerous potential solutions and stakeholder viewpoints,” said Melanie Kay, director of the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Colorado Law. “The winning essays demonstrated a combination of good judgment, practical thinking, and professionalism in response to a complicated fact-pattern for which there is no ‘perfect’ solution.”
Each winner will receive a scholarship prize and join a celebratory lunch.
The Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Colorado Law seeks to foster a high standard of ethics in students. Its primary objective is to actively engage students to help them build a solid principle-based ethical framework central to decision making. To learn more about the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative at Colorado Law, please visit colorado.edu/law/daniels-fund.
Pictured: Michael Miller and Shelby Krantz.