CIA 3 - Response Paper I

OVERVIEW

• the falling standards, public mistrust and declining confidence in the legal profession, particularly in
lawyers, the time has come to emphasize a deeper understand of professional ethics among lawyers.

• Deeper understanding of professional ethics:

1. Getting away with traditional system of professional ethics

2. Articulates a different notion of professional responsibility

TRADITIONAL SYSTEM OF PROESSIONAL ETHICS

• Incined and restricted to the standards of professional conduct and

etiquette for lawyers as devised by the Bar Council of India rules; and

• Limited practical knowledge imparted in law schools through legal

clinics.

REPURCUSSIONS OF THE TRADITIONAL SYSTEM ON LAWYERS

• Lawyers being too much rule oriented

• Resulted in distancing themselves from ethical responsibilities and

goals of truth and justice

HOW TO ‘NOT’ DISTANCE THEMSELVES

• Lawyers should not isolate their private morality as distinct from their
legal profession.

• Every lawyer shall integrate their individual emotions, feelings ad

instincts into professional decision making.
INTRODUCTION: TIME FOR SOME STATS!

• Indian legal profession is the second largest in the world

• Approximately one million lawyers

• with more than 80,000 lawyers graduating each year

• from around 900 law schools

• Despite such large numbers, Indian legal profession has constantly

become a subject of public misunderstanding and mistrust

WHY PULIC MISUNDERSTANDING AND MISTRUST

• Absence of normative values in lawyers

• Both the Bar Council and legal academy undermining the normative
values in lawyer

• which is the reason for falling ethical standards

• and which finally becomes the peutimate reason of widespread

public mistrust and disbelief in the Indian legal profession

DOMINANT UNDERSTANDING OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

• has been constructed primarily in terms of rights

• where lawyers act

• by prioritizing

• their individual freedom and autonomy; and

• undermining the ideals of care and community

Negative perception of lawyers in the minds of public

• Public perception of lawyers today is ‘selfish fortune seekers’;

• Rather than ‘those who are seeking to serve’

• Values like money, power and ‘uncomprimising drive to ‘win’

• Are fast replacing

• Professional values like integrity, decency and mutuality in legal profession

• Decline of legal professionalism

• Negative Public Opinion of lawyers and legal profession

• Increase in lawyer dissatisfaction and dysfunction

• Three fold reasons for Erosion of Professional values

FIRST REASON:

• Erosion of these professional values begins

• Much before a laywer enters professional practice

• Begins in entering law school

• from the very first year of law school

• and goes on till a student graduates

• Finally manifests itself during legal practice

AUTHOR’S IMPORTANT QUESTION

“If the legal system is so so professional, ethical and noble, then why it is that the legal system have
increasingly become inaccessible to the poor and marginalised section.”

• Lawyers more inclining towards bureaucratisation, specialisation and commercialisation of legal

practice; and

• Technical legal education systematically undermining ethical considerations

WHAT IT HAS RESULTED TO?

• Which resulted in leaving lawyers with ‘inferior judgment capacities’

• a narrow range of moral sensibilities and

• reduced personal commiment to moral behavior

• Public care for feminine values like compassion and care

• Laweyrs, on the other hand, care embody traditional masculine values of rationality, neutrality and
impartiality in a fair and predictable legal system

• The author believes that there shouldn’t be just feminine value or masculine values.

• Both the values must go in hand and compliment each other

• This has resulted in creating a gap between lawyers and public in understanding the concept of
professional ethics.

• Because of this gap, public has lost their faith in the legal profession

• And they perceive lawyers as cold, uncaring, aggressive, competitive and overly rule oriented.

• There is no ‘real’ professionalism in lawyers today

• Absence of ‘real’ professional value can be witnessed from the fact that
• 90 percent of the Supreme Court lawyers appearing for the Advocates on Record examination in 2013
failed the paper on Professional Ethics and Advocacy.

 Current Code of Ethics Promotes Unfair Legal Competition

 High Quality Legal Representation is Expensive

 Social Action Litigation Failed to Meet Objective

 Legal Aid Lawyers do not have Adequate Training

 Lower Court Judges have Narrow Minded Opinionated Views and Focus on Upholding
Procedural and Administrative Views

 Legal Education Inefficient

The structure and practice milieu of legal practice in India has been radically altered in the last decade or
so. In this context, the legal academy and the Bar must attempt to develop new approaches to teaching,
learning and practicing professional responsibility which will require a counter-socialisation of sorts that
prioritises social context, moral reasoning, care and connection, intuition and motivation.

TRADITIONAL SYSTEM OF PROESSIONAL ETHICS

SECOND REASON

THIRD REASON: MASCULINE VS FEMININE VALUES: GAP BETWEEN LAWYERS AND PUBLIC

Conclusion

WHY PULIC MISUNDERSTANDING AND MISTRUST

NURTURING CARING LAWYERS: RETHINKING PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND RESPONSIBILITY IN INDIA

- Ipshita Sengupta

- Year of Publishment: 2014

BY: VISHAL, SIMRAN AND HARIDYA

HOW TO ‘NOT’ DISTANCE THEMSELVES

DOMINANT UNDERSTANDING OF PROFESSIONAL ETHICS

REPURCUSSIONS OF THE TRADITIONAL SYSTEM ON LAWYERS

INTRODUCTION: TIME FOR SOME STATS!

• Lawyers should not isolate their private morality as distinct from their legal profession.
• Every lawyer shall integrate their individual emotions, feelings ad instincts into professional decision
making.

• Incined and restricted to the standards of professional conduct and etiquette for lawyers as devised by
the Bar Council of India rules; and

• Limited practical knowledge imparted in law schools through legal clinics.

OVERVIEW

• Indian legal profession is the second largest in the world

• Approximately one million lawyers

• with more than 80,000 lawyers graduating each year

• from around 900 law schools

• Despite such large numbers, Indian legal profession has constantly become a subject of public
misunderstanding and mistrust

• Absence of normative values in lawyers

• Both the Bar Council and legal academy undermining the normative values in lawyer

• which is the reason for falling ethical standards

• and which finally becomes the peutimate reason of widespread public mistrust and disbelief in the
Indian legal profession

ABSENCE OF ‘REAL’ PROFESSIONAL VALUES

EROSION OF PROFESSIONAL VALUES

TAKING PROFESSIONAL ETHICS SERIOUSLY!

SUSAN DAICOFF’S TRIPARTITE CRISIS IN INDIAN LEGAL PROFESSION

How Caring is the Legal Profession in India?

 Problems with Real Legal World

 Structure of Legal Education

WHY THIS NEGATIVE PUBLIC PERCEPTION

Ethics and the Legal Profession

 Assumption of Law
  Movement to "Humanize Legal Education

• has been constructed primarily in terms of rights

• where lawyers act

• by prioritizing

• their individual freedom and autonomy; and

• undermining the ideals of care and community

• the falling standards, public mistrust and declining confidence in the legal profession, particularly in
lawyers, the time has come to emphasize a deeper understand of professional ethics among lawyers.

• Deeper understanding of professional ethics:

1. Getting away with traditional system of professional ethics

2. Articulates a different notion of professional responsibility

 Importance of Teaching Ethics

• Lawyers being too much rule oriented

• Resulted in distancing themselves from ethical responsibilities and goals of truth and justice

 Ethics of Care

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