Lawyers And Ethics

What options did Paul Bernardo’s lawyer have when his client directed him to retrieve hidden evidence? Where would David Milgaard be today if a lawyer hadn’t doggedly challenged his murder conviction? And what should a defence lawyer do when told her client is a danger to the public? In this book, leading Canadian legal academics and practising lawyers draw on real-life stories to probe the tension between ethics and the law. Whether re-examining high-profile cases, celebrating barristers who tore down barriers, or pointing out current injustices within the justice system, their stories are compelling and raise important questions about what it takes to be a “good” lawyer.

This Understanding treatise analyzes the fundamental issues of lawyers' ethics and the ABA's Model Rules. It is designed to facilitate a real understanding of legal rules as distinguished from a superficial familiarity with them by challenging the reader to test their understanding of the legal rules against the reader's own moral standards and reasoned judgment. The sixth edition has substantial new material on cross-examination in sexual assault cases; prosecution in the context of race and policing; the rise of the "progressive prosecutor movement"; the renewed call for the U.S. Supreme Court to abide by the Code of Judicial Ethics; and the ethics of lawyers engaged in former president Donald Trump's scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Should a lawyer keep a client's secret even when disclosure would exculpate a person wrongly accused of crime? The Practice of Justice is a fresh look at this and other traditional questions about the ethics of lawyering.

This book provides an empirically grounded, in-depth investigation of the ethical dimensions to in-house practice and how legal risk is defined and managed by in-house lawyers and others. The growing significance and status of the role of General Counsel has been accompanied by growth in legal risk as a phenomenon of importance. In-house lawyers are regularly exhorted to be more commercial, proactive and strategic, to be business leaders and not (mere) lawyers, but they are increasingly exposed for their roles in organisational scandals. This book poses the question: how far does going beyond being a lawyer conflict with or entail being more ethical? It explores the role of in-housers by calling on three key pieces of empirical research: two tranches of interviews with senior in-house lawyers and senior compliance staff; and an unparalleled large survey of in-house lawyers. On the basis of this evidence, the authors explore how ideas about in-house roles shape professional logics; how far professional notions such as independence play a role in those logics; and the ways in which ethical infrastructure are managed or are absent from in-house practice. It concludes with a discussion of whether and how in-house lawyers and their regulators need to take professionalism and professional ethicality more seriously.

Susan D. Carle centers this collection of texts on the premise that legal ethics should be far more than a set of rules on professional responsibility.