ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL LEGAL PRACTICE

SOLICITOR (GENERAL PRACTICE)

“Can a good lawyer be a good person? The question troubles lawyers and law students alike. They are troubled by the demands of loyalty to one`s client and by the fact that one can win approval as a good, maybe even great, lawyer even though that loyalty is engrossed by over-privileged or positively distasteful clients. How, they ask, is such loyalty compatible with that devotion to the common good characteristic of high moral principles? And whatever their views of the common good, they are troubled because the willingness of lawyers to help their clients use the law to the prejudice of the weak or the innocent seems morally corrupt. The lawyer is conventionally seen as a professional devoted to his client`s interests and as authorized, if not in fact required, to do some things (though not anything) for that client which he would not do for himself.”

Charles Fried, The Lawyer as Friend: The Moral Foundations of the Lawyer-Client Relation, 85 Yale L.J. 1060 (1976).

Explain and discuss in relation to the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors 2019 and the ethical dilemmas faced by solicitors.

SOLICITOR (CORPORATE PRACTICE)

“Lawyers’ ethics are sometimes criticised for the absence of a clear duty to the public interest. Critics might argue that it suggests that legal professional ethics are something of a mirage. Without duties to third parties legal ethics amount to little more than service to clients and courts. Client duties are, largely, self-interested rather than altruistic; it is, after all, clients who are paying the bill. This deficit is particularly noticeable regarding collective responsibilities, such as those that might be owed to shareholders or the public generally.”

“Lawyers’ Ethics and Professional Responsibility” Andrew Boon page 261

Explain and discuss in relation to the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors 2019 and the ethical dilemmas faced by corporate solicitors.

In particular consider to what degree do solicitors owe a duty to the public generally