Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Welcome! I'm so glad you're considering PL 103. This is an online (no scheduled meetings) course, which means there will be no live Zoom lectures. You will be responsible for checking the course's D2L at least three times a week to read the lessons, work through the heuristic exercises, post discussion comments, and complete weekly quizzes and assignments.

The weekly modules open Monday at 12:00 a.m. Initial discussion posts are due Thursday at 11:59 p.m., and peer replies, quizzes, and the rest of the week's work are due the following Sunday at 11:59 p.m. I do my best to respond to student emails within twenty-four (24) hours, and I ask that you do the same when you hear from me or your classmates.

Plan on roughly 9 to 12 hours per week for the coursework. There is no final exam and no midterm. Your grade is built across ten module quizzes, weekly discussions, three hypothetical assignments, weekly timekeeping logs, and a Cultural Competence Project.

What this course is. Every licensed legal professional in Oregon, whether attorney or Licensed Paralegal, is bound by a set of ethics rules that govern how they practice and how they treat the people they serve. PL 103 is the course where you learn those rules. We work with the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct directly, applying them to realistic fact patterns and building the professional judgment to spot issues before they become problems.

We also pay attention to the bigger questions the rules raise, because the rules don't exist in a vacuum. Oregon created the Licensed Paralegal program to close an access-to-justice gap that the rules alone were not closing. Confidentiality has exceptions because the profession had to wrestle with hard cases. Advertising rules draw lines that came from somewhere. Studying where the rules came from and where they fall short is how you learn to apply them under pressure.

Licensed Paralegal ethics credential. PL 103 covers the Oregon RPC for Licensed Paralegals (ORPC-LP), which took effect February 1, 2026. Under the LP admission rules, applicants who complete an accredited course on the Rules of Professional Conduct applicable to Licensed Paralegals in Oregon with a grade of 3.3 or higher on a 4.0 scale (or 82.5% or higher on the institution's point scale) meet the ethics requirement for licensure without sitting for the separate ethics examination. PL 103 is designed to meet that standard.

Required text. There is no textbook to purchase. All readings are provided through D2L, and the Oregon Rules of Professional Conduct are available free from the Oregon State Bar.

A note on AI. This course has a very clear and strict academic integrity policy on AI usage. Please read the syllabus.

About your instructor. I'm Megan Dorton, a licensed Oregon attorney and faculty member in PCC's Paralegal Program. I practice in family, housing, and administrative law, and I came to PCC to help train future legal professionals to increase access to justice. I love this course and I look forward to working with you. You can reach me anytime at megan.dorton@pcc.edu.

Please note. This class may be combined with another section. If it is, students enrolled in the other section will be able to see your discussion board posts but not your section's class list. If you would prefer not to be visible to students in the other section, please let me know and I will take measures to prevent this.