ABSTRACT
Law, Literature and Medicine is advertised as a course about professionalism, although from the course Prospectus, it should be clear that its focus is considerably broader than the traditional professional-school courses in professional responsibility, medical jurisprudence or medical ethics. Students should be willing to step outside of their carefully constructed professional personae and encounter the works we read in the spirit of honesty, openness and generosity. Faced with the task of leading a discussion of a poem, the students shed their veneer of professional competence and immediately look around the table for help. It can situate empathy within the tradition of professionalism in the practice of law and it can provide an opportunity for the empathic abilities of law students to develop and improve. Law students, through their encounters with literature and the arts, can learn to model empathy. The cure lies in a new understanding of professionalism, one that includes empathetic understanding.
