Stein Center for Law and Ethics
Stein Prize
Stein Scholars
Publications
Scholarly and Professional Programs
About the Center
The Louis Stein Center for Law and Ethics works in collaboration with law students, practitioners, judges and legal scholars to study and improve the legal profession by: honoring exemplary lawyers; inculcating ethics into teaching law; training future lawyers “in the service of others;” incorporating ethical and professional values into academic and mentoring programs; and encouraging scholarly inquiry and scholarship on the professional conduct and regulation of lawyers.
Above all, the Stein Center fosters an understanding of “ethical legal practice” that goes beyond adherence to the rules outlined in professional codes of conduct. The Stein Center funds and, jointly with the Public Interest Resource Center, oversees the student-driven Stein Scholars Program, an academic and service program in which selected students to participate through all three years of law school, and throughout their careers.
Global Legal Professions
The Stein Center collaborates with legal academics, practitioners and legal ethics centers internationally to promote dialogue and encourage comparative scholarship on legal professions around the world. The Center hosted and organized the 2016 International Legal Ethics Conference VII: The Ethics and Regulation of Lawyers Worldwide: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives in conjunction with the International Association of Legal Ethics, as well as the Conference on Regulation of Legal and Judicial Services: Comparative and International Perspectives in 2017.
In 2025, the Stein Center became a founding member of the Global Network for Centers on the Legal Profession, which held its inaugural meeting at IE Law School in Madrid.
Access to Justice
The Stein Center studies and supports all sectors of the legal profession, but its special emphasis has been on the legal needs of those who are the most vulnerable. The Center established the Stein Scholars Program in 1992 to support Fordham Law students seeking careers in public interest law and public services, especially those committed to serving low-income clients.
Since the late 1990s, the Center has organized conferences and publications addressing the legal needs of older clients, children, low-income clients and other vulnerable populations. In recent years, the Center has collaborated on programming with the law school’s Access to Justice Initiative and the National Center for Access to Justice. Among the most recent programs is an Innovation Day in June 2025, co-sponsored with NCAJ, bringing together scholars and practitioners to discuss research on laws and practices that govern state court decision-making regarding parties’ ability to pay fines and fees.
