Professional ethics should be at the heart of what each and every one of us does

CHARLES Dickens once said ‘if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers’. There may be more than a hint of truth in this statement but the public perception of lawyers paints us to be a profession of self-interested, well-educated individuals who use the law as a means to make money at all costs.

By the very nature of the job, a lawyer, be it a private client or corporate lawyer or litigator, is cursed with the responsibility of having to advise their respective client of the law as it stands relevant to their situation, whether it be the outcome they had hoped for or not. This advice will not always seem fair or even logical but we are confined to advise on the law as it is, not what we want it to be or even what we feel it should be. Often those situations involve, or indeed revolve around, financial circumstances and a lawyer’s point of view can be seen as obstructive. To compound matters, this advice often comes at a premium and, understandably, no-one likes to pay to hear bad news. As a result, lawyers are labelled money grabbers who thrive on misery. We are stereotyped as a profession who are making a fortune from the misfortune of others.

Undoubtedly, the remuneration of lawyers appears to rankle the public at large. While being a lawyer provides a comfortable living it is a very different industry to say that of someone employed in the financial sector where access to a bonus structure or performance-related pay is typical. For those of us young enough to require student loans, diploma costs (for which there is little funding) and a trainee salary, often it can mean years of working post-qualification before the perceived financial benefits are felt. For every corporate high flyer who works hard and is financially rewarded, there is a legal aid solicitor being paid significantly less representing a voice that still deserves to heard.

That is not to say that wayward lawyers, whose sole purpose is simply to help themselves, do not exist. It is simply the case that there are good and bad people in every walk of life.

A lazy, dishonest doctor is no different to a lazy, dishonest lawyer, it is simply the way that the laziness or dishonesty manifests itself which is fundamentally different. This is why every lawyer ought to take it upon themselves to be the very best version of themselves. It is not for our profession to lecture on the importance of providing accurate information to HM Revenue & Customs or the solemnity of swearing to the details of an affidavit without making the conscious effort to show that we do not intentionally breach the letter, or the spirit, of the law. This is not because of our individual morality, as morality is an internal measure dictated by external factors, which is inherently subjective. It is our professional ethics that set us apart from others and should be the value system on which every lawyer relies.

There will always be some lawyers who help themselves, by exploiting a situation to charge larger fees or cut corners because they don’t feel like complying with something as mundane as the Solicitors Accounts rules but, in my experience, they are outweighed by members of a profession, young and old, male and female, who acknowledge the privileged role we serve in the community. By upholding the system of right and wrong, in our chosen specialism, the role of a lawyer should always be to help others.

l Nicola Park is a solicitor with Turcan Connell. This essay was runner-up in a Scottish Young Lawyers’ Association and WS Society competition which asked: ‘Do lawyers really help people or are they just helping themselves? The winning entry, by Katharine Spencer, was published last week.