ETHICS AND PROFESSIONAL LEGAL PRACTICE
ESSAY TITLES
SOLICITOR (GENERAL PRACTICE)
“Our Risk Outlook 2014 highlighted Failure to act with integrity or ethics: improper or abusive litigation as one of our priority risks. It is critical that solicitors manage this risk effectively if we are to ensure that the legal services market operates in a way that serves the needs of consumers and the public interest.”
‘Walking the line: The balancing of duties in litigation’ March 2015 Solicitors Regulatory Authority
Explain and discuss the above in relation to the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors 2019 and the ethical dilemmas faced by solicitors.
SOLICITOR (CORPORATE PRACTICE)
“It is pretty hard to find a group less concerned with serving society and more concerned with serving themselves than lawyers”
F. Rodell ‘Goodbye to Law Review’ (1936) 23 Virginia Law Review 38, at p.42
Have corporate lawyers lost their moral compass? Explain and discuss the above quotation with reference to the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors 2019 and the ethical dilemmas faced by solicitors in corporate practice.
BARRISTER
“The solutions to the daily problems arising from the duties of the barrister are left to the barrister`s honour. Lord Macmillan identified five core duties of an advocate: ‘… a duty to his client, a duty to his opponent, a duty to the court, a duty to the state and a duty to himself’. Du Cann observed that the proper observance of these duties ‘may prevent [the barrister] ever rising to his feet at all, whilst a failure to follow them may result in an appearance before a disciplinary committee … and the striking of his name from the list of those qualified to practise in the courts”
‘Ethics and the legal profession, part three.’ 7 December 2009 by Mark Humphries
