Comparing Engineering Ethics to Lawyer Ethics

Posted by Alan Childress
There is a brief and surprisingly interesting 2006 article, posted on the website of the American Society for Engineering Education, which compares the ethics codes for lawyers to those for engineers.  It particularly focuses on the approach, mindset, and structure of the two sets of codes, and finds that the engineering rules–which tend to be sparser, more abstract, and less practical–can gain from the ABA’s experience and product.  It is entitled, “A Comparative Study of Professional Ethics:  What Can the Ethics of the Legal Profession Teach Engineers?”  The authors, Paul Rossler and Martin High, are engineering professors at Oklahoma State, and one of them (High) is also trained and licensed as a patent lawyer.