"I will be loyal and committed to my client's lawful objectives, but I will not permit that loyalty and commitment to interfere with my duty to provide objective and independent advice."
From my perspective at this stage of a 38 year career in the courtroom, when I am no longer practicing for money and am just trying to obtain legal protections for indigent and abused women and children, this paragraph of the Creed falls short.
A client’s objective may be lawful, but still unworthy. For instance, a client’s objectives to obtain sole managing conservatorship of his or her children and to deny the other parent access will certainly be “lawful.” But the lawyer may feel certain from the undeniable facts of the case, her experience of the emotions and skewed perspectives of people in custody litigation, and her own moral judgment that accomplishing those objectives would not be in the best interest of the children.
A lawyer who consistently accepts or continues professional relationship with clients whose objectives she personally feels are unworthy, even though lawful, is headed toward deep professional and personal dissatisfaction and eventual burn-out. There is just not enough money to compensate for the personal consequences from a disconnect between being a financially successful lawyer and a moral being. A lawyer is free to consider whether they feel a potential client’s objectives are worthy as well as lawful before entering into the relationship. And if the case turns out to be significantly different than the one they signed up, because, for instance, the client deceived the lawyer about critical facts, the lawyer may and can seek permission, at an appropriate time, to withdraw.
This paragraph of the creed seems to limit a lawyer’s duty of loyalty and commitment to the client’s lawful objective only by the right to give objective, independent and dissenting advice. But if such advice is given and ignored, and, in the moral judgment of the lawyer, the client persists in a most unworthy objective, what then? Are the only recourses then for the lawyer to swallow her scruples and to continue to be the client’s hired gun, or to ask the court to end the relationship when that can be accomplished without harm to the client, despite the financial consequence to the lawyer? Better for everyone for the lawyer to be concerned about much more than the fee before entering into the relationship.
Submitted by the Reverand Brooks Harrington, J.D.
Methodist Justice Ministry Fort Worth, Texas
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