Now that Ethics Jeopardy has been presented at the State Bar of Texas Property Tax Legal Seminar, it is available online. You should be able to access the jeopardy game from the beginning at www.rongray.com/ethics. To jump straight to the first board, go to www.rongray.com/ethics/jeopardy.html and miss the exciting preliminaries.

To enhance your viewing pleasure, there are a few things that you need to be aware of:

1.    The game was created for use with the Firefox browser. It has not been tested with other browsers. It is possible some portions of the game will not work properly with other browsers or that the screens (especially the boards) might not fit entirely in the browser window and thus require scrolling.

2.    The boards were set up for an approximate screen size of 1024x768 pixels. That approximate width should work best, but I have not tested many other resolutions. If your screen is set to a much larger pixel width common to larger screens, then the board will appear smaller rather than filling up most of the screen. If you use a smaller pixel setting, then you will likely have to scroll vertically to see all of the board and the categories might appear scrunched (that is a word, right?).

3.    For any slide but the boards themselves, move to the next slide by clicking on the words in the center. So if you are on an answer and click on the center words, you will be taken to the question. If you are at the question, then clicking will take you back to the board. You should not have to use the back button in your browser.

4.    For the boards themselves:
            A.    Clicking on a category title will take you to a brief explanation of the topic covered in that category. Clicking on that explanation will take you back to the board. The game is a mixture of legal ethics, recent property tax amendments, and other "related" matters.
            B.    Clicking on a dollar amount will take you to the answer for that category amount. Clicking on the answer will take you to the question. Clicking on the question will take you back to the board.
            C.    The dollar amounts for answers that have already been clicked should disappear on the board to show that they have already been used so as to prevent repeats. However, if you mouseover a blank tile, you will see the dollar amount. If for some reason you wish to return to an answer and question, you can do so by clicking on the dollar amount that shows up on the mouseover.
            D.    Once you have clicked on an amount and it is blanked out on the board, clearing your browser history should restore the board to show all dollar amounts. This should restore the entire board. An advantage to viewing online is that, if you do not clear you browser history, you can return to the board later and the answers you have already viewed shuld be blank, as though you have bookmarked your place.
            E.    Once a board is complete or as you wish, you can click on the bottom row to move to the next board. For example, at the bottom of the first board, it says Double Jeopardy and will take you to the next board. There are three boards in all: regular, double, and triple,

DISCLAIMER: No brain cells were harmed in the presentation of this program.
 

Ethics Jeopardy is to be presented as part of the State Bar of Texas Property Tax Legal Seminar on April 25, 2016, in Austin.

This is the fifth iteration of the ethics game to be presented at the annual legal seminar. It was first presented in 2007, and then again in 2008, 2011, and 2014. At least, those are the years I recall. While one might think that requesting the game to be presented yet again is a signal of interest and acceptance of the presentation, I choose to think of it more as a sign of desperation by the seminar planners. After all, they are required to include a presentation on ethics during the seminar and cannot really expect many to pay much attention during the mid-afternoon time slot immediately following the last break of the day. It is after all ethics; and we are after all lawyers.

This year's version is all new; i.e., no repeats of answers and questions from prior versions. At least it is as far as I can recall.

No, I will not be presenting the jeopardy game. While I might agree to create the software for the game (copyrighted by the way), and determine the categories and the answers and questions included, I have no interest in standing on stage clicking and reading the content. I will leave that to younger attorneys with the law firm of Geary, Porter & Donovan, P.C.

After the newest version of the game has been presented during the legal seminar, perhaps I will post a link to it so that anyone who might miss the creative, imaginative, and educational presentation can enjoy it on their own time. Or look at it for the purpose of mocking and derision.