Legal Ethics

Legal ethics refers to those norms that regulate the members of the legal profession in the practice of law. The concept refers to two distinct yet interrelated kinds of norms: first, those principles and rules specified in the professional codes of conduct and the various statutes that formally govern the practice of law; and second, those moral or public interest norms and principles, not necessarily codified, that ought to govern the practice of law.

The first meaning refers to actual ethics codes as well as state and federal statutes that regulate the practice of law. An example of such practical regulation of the legal profession includes the American Bar Association's Model Rules (or some variation on these) adopted by the state bar associations. Practical regulation of the statutory type includes a wide variety of legislatively enacted and common-law adopted rules and procedures governing everything from the treatment of witnesses and disclosure of evidence to the handling of client funds and the confidentiality of client declarations.

The second meaning draws on the relation between the practice of law and the public good. This sense of legal ethics refers to the normative regulation of legal practice toward the creation or maintenance of a just society or the attainment of some public good. For example, when the public good requires the conviction [Page 1275]of the guilty, and a lawyer knows that his or her client is guilty, at the very least, the lawyer ought to convince the client to plead guilty rather than run the risk of him or her being acquitted. This obligation runs counter to the practical requirements of both the Bar Association Model Rules and statutory requirements, which specify that the principal duty of an attorney is to provide a vigorous defense of the client's interests.

From this brief consideration, it should be apparent that the practical and the normative regulation of legal practice may not only work at cross purposes (client's private interest vs. public good), but even when their purposes are harmonious, they may demand that the practicing attorney follow incompatible or mutually exclusive courses of action.