Navigating Moral Conflicts in Legal Practice
Dear LiL: As a lawyer, I often find myself working on cases that involve complex ethical dilemmas. How can lawyers balance their professional obligations with personal moral values when these two aspects seem to conflict? Are there any specific frameworks or strategies that you recommend for navigating these challenging situations?
Dear Ethical Dilemma – thank you for your excellent question to LiL. You are asking the age-old question in law. Before I became a lawyer, I read a book by F.L. Bailey entitled “The Defense Never Rests”. That book became part of my inspiration for pursuing a career in law. If you have not read the book, I strongly recommend it. The underlying theme of the book which was weaved into the fascinating true life stories of the cases that F.L. Bailey handled, was the question of how can you defend someone that you know is guilty? While that ethical dilemma is specific to criminal law and lawyers practicing criminal law, in my view it is equally applicable to all of us practicing law. The most important part of our job is protecting the very system that we are operating in. That means that despite anything else, our job is to ensure that the rule of law is protected. We have only to look south of our border to see examples of how that can be threatened when we may have previously thought that impossible.
The ethical dilemmas we face as legal counsel are endless. For me, I navigate those by having a few guiding principles. Those principles include access to justice, honesty and the right of an individual to make their own decisions. Our job as legal counsel is not to make the decision for our clients, it is to use our legal expertise to guide them in their decision making, but at the end of the day, the decision is the client’s. Layered on top of that are our significant duties as legal counsel. Those are set out in the BC Code of Professional Conduct. The statement of general principles is as follows:
A lawyer is a minister of justice, an officer of the courts, a client’s advocate and a member of an ancient, honourable and learned profession.
In these several capacities, it is a lawyer’s duty to promote the interests of the state, serve the cause of justice, maintain the authority and dignity of the courts, be faithful to clients, be candid and courteous in relations with other lawyers and demonstrate personal integrity.
As lawyers, we fill a very privileged and important role. As lawyers our personal moral values may be less important than our understanding of the general principles that underly our membership in this great profession. When you’re faced with an ethical dilemma, a good place to start your analysis is with a review of the Canons of Legal Ethics and with some reflection on what it means to be a lawyer including the duties that that position carries with it.
Your question is a complex, nuanced and difficult question. It caused all of us at LiL to pause. It also caused us to think that this would make for a great panel discussion. Perhaps the largest challenge that we have as lawyers is to subordinate our personal views or intuitions for the greater good of the legal system itself. And that really is what F. L. Bailey’s book was all about. Lawyers are such an integral and important part of maintaining the social harmony in our societies and that job requires more than attention to a personal moral compass. Your personal moral compass serves as the warning light which then should be guided by your duties as legal counsel, the principles that underly our justice system and the requirement to serve not just justice, but also the court, your clients and your fellow lawyers.
Stay tuned while we figure out logistics for organizing a panel discussion on this very important topic!
About the Author
Rose Keith, KC is a partner with Harper Grey. Not only is she a skilled mediator, she also maintains a multi-faceted practice focusing on workplace law assisting both employers and employees. In both realms, she is known for her broad subject matter expertise, legal acumen and sound judgment. Rose is a blur of perpetual motion lending her irrepressible enthusiasm to many different organizations and associations she passionately supports both inside and outside the legal community.