Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility
Duties to client, court, and profession
Legal ethics questions test the attorney's duties: loyalty, confidentiality, independence, competence, and integrity before the court. Understand that the duty to the court may override client instructions.
Concepts you must know
- Attorney-client privilege and its exceptions.
- Conflict of interest: concurrent and successive representation.
- Fees: legality, transparency, contingency limits.
- Duty not to mislead the court; duty to disclose adverse authority where required.
- Discipline: grounds, proceedings, sanctions; bar membership obligations.
Traps
- Assuming confidentiality survives the client's death without limits.
- Missing successive conflicts when a new client is adverse to a former client.
- Treating zealous advocacy as a licence to misstate facts or law.
- Overlooking that fee disputes may trigger disciplinary as well as civil consequences.
Worked example
A lawyer learns that a former client's new matter is adverse to a current client. Rule of thumb: identify the former client's confidential information, assess whether it is material, and if so decline or obtain informed consent where permitted.
Rule of thumb
Ask: whose interest, what information, what duty, and what disclosure is required?