4 What Are Legal Ethics? Why Do We Discuss Legal Ethics? Why Do You Need to Know about Legal Ethics?
- Would you defend a baker in a lawsuit from a gay or lesbian couple who sued the baker because the baker refused to bake a wedding cake for the couple because of their sexual orientation?
- You are a partner in a law firm with over 50 lawyers in your office and over 30 offices worldwide. What would you do if you learned that another partner is discriminating against female junior associates in your office?
- You recently discovered that your firm brings in a new client who is a high-profile movie producer being sued for sexual harassment. How would you proceed if your firm decides to represent such a person, but you strongly disagree?
- You are worried that an attorney in another law firm is an alcoholic. You have recently heard rumors that the lawyer has started neglecting clients and files. What do you do? Should you report the lawyer to the state bar?
- What if you missed a filing deadline and you know you may be sued for malpractice by your client? Do you change the postmark date on the mailing machine in your office to commit fraud to avoid malpractice?
- Would you expect a judicial officer to recuse him- or herself voluntarily? If so, in what situations? What if someone tells you that the judge is in a basketball league with opposing counsel? Do you make a big deal about this and ask the judge to recuse him- or herself?
These scenarios represent only a handful of thousands, or maybe even millions, of ethical and moral situations you may face as a lawyer. More importantly, these are real-life situations. You can imagine these happening. How you emotionally approach any one of these circumstances will be vastly different from the way some of your classmates will approach them. Your morality—your internal “what is right and wrong” meter—is what guides you. What you do in response may be in part due to morality, but also in part due to ethics (how the law expects you to respond). The rules governing lawyers in the United States require that lawyers be ethical; however, they also recognize it is hard to remove one’s morality from the equation. Lawyers are, after all, just human. We tend to forget that sometimes, but we are. Humans are emotional creatures. We cannot take emotions out of the law. However, our legal training will teach us to separate emotions from the law. Whether you end up doing this will largely shape the type of lawyer you become.
Read the following article from the New Republic about well-respected and former solicitor general Neal Katyal. https://newrepublic.com/article/160481/neal-katyal-depravity-big-law
After reading the article, ask yourself: do you agree with the author that it is hypocritical to criticize an attorney for representing a corporation that is currently being sued by formally enslaved children?