# Are lawyers supposed to follow a code of ethics? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 24, 2015, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288 "2015-12-24T20:13:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/61 "2015-12-29T20:09:06Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > We’ve talked about the OJ case before and I think that’s one where most people rightly feel that a man got away with murder. Do you or the prosecutors or anyone else know with absolute certainty that he did it? What is the source of this absolute certainty? Were you there? Is there a video? Did he admit it to you? The O.J. Simpson case is probably not a good example for anything having to do with the justice system. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/62 "2015-12-29T20:39:07Z")
And again, confessions are notoriously subject to coercion. Some people act like if someone confesses to a crime, that’s it, the case is closed. But people confess to crimes they didn’t commit all the time, for all sorts of reasons. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/63 "2015-12-29T20:56:11Z")
> [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > That’s half of the answer to your question, I think, and you’ve already heard that part. I like your response and I do think you make a good case, even though I’m not fully convinced. The question of vigilante justice is difficult, as we all wish to be Batman but probably end up more like Two-Face. But I cannot envision that there wouldn’t be exceptions from time to time. Maybe it’ll only happen once in a lifetime, but I would be compelled to seize it. No, I don’t want everyone to simply do what’s on their conscience, that would be chaos and anarchy. Which is why I wouldn’t support a total dismantling of the system and just have every lawyer on the honor system. I get why we have laws and why they are good, but what I cannot deny is that there are instances in history where good people break laws to affect change, and some of those are pretty uniformly celebrated. I wish you had talked about that some more. I want to know if I missed a reason why it was ok to stand up to tyranny in the past but apparently not any more. Maybe its not a race of people or a whole gender whose affected now, maybe its just one guy who will be jailed but its still injustice. > [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](#): > > Take the Batman route one time and what you’ve accepted is that you’re a cog in a corrupt and unjust machine that will _not_ work toward fair outcomes in the larger picture. Once you’ve accepted that, let’s say it’s a Wednesday. If you’re not Batman on Thursday, how the fuck is that justice? If it’s justice on Thursday, why wasn’t it justice on Wednesday? Isn’t that saying the perfect is the enemy of the good? Even Batman can’t stop all muggings, robberies, pickpockets, etc. But he fixes what he can. If I saved a guy on Wednesday and cannot or will not do it on Thursday, haven’t I still saved someone on Wednesday? Haven’t I still helped? To the guy I saved, does it matter to him that I couldn’t do it for someone else? > [@Chihuahua](#): > > \*\*YogSosoth, \*\* all of your arguments presume flawless and omniscient actors. The prosecutor does not have perfect knowledge of the crime, and neither does the defense attorney. The legal system acknowledges this problem. You say that everyone should be on the same side (that being “justice”) but no one in all of human history has been able to articulate what “justice” objectively is or how we can implement it. Rather, we all have different ideas on what “justice” is and the best method we have come up with for implementing it is the adversarial system. If you have a superior method by which to accomplish this, please let us know. Well I didn’t say we needed the same sense of justice. And again, I’m not saying every lawyer should do this in every instance. I’m simply saying I would do it if I was in that situation, and maybe OJ’s lawyers should have done it, and a handful of other times. I understand that there are those who would do it for ill. In fact, I think that probably happens whether or not I decide to become a lawyer and do this. What I do cannot affect them, but that doesn’t mean that what I can do isn’t effective at all. Small steps. > [@Procrustus](#): > > What I’m saying is that there is nothing immoral about defending people who you believe are guilty. In fact, it’s quite moral. > > In your example, there is no conflict between the two. Why is it moral to defend the guilty? > [@Chihuahua](#): > > Case in point. By what standard is OJ “obviously” guilty? Were you there? Did you witness it? Did you bring a camera? Many people BELIEVE he is guilty, but we do not KNOW. The Defense Attorney’s job is not to “get him off” by helping him escape, their job is to point out the flaws in the Prosecutor’s methodology. > > If Johnny Cochrane KNEW OJ committed the murders, that means Cochrane was a witness rather than an attorney. We can agree that a defendant’s lawyers are privy to a lot of information the rest of us aren’t, right? Its not a stretch to think that in some closed-door conversation protected by attorney client privileges, information was divulged that implicate the defendant. Maybe he confessed to it. Maybe he said something only the murderer would know. Whatever it is, it happened. When you’re the lawyer in that case, you serve justice much more by doing whatever you can to ensure that he goes to jail and pays for what he’s done. And no, I cannot know because I wasn’t there, but if people only had opinions for when they were 100% sure of something, then nobody would have opinions. Even prosecutors are not 100% sure he killed Nicole and Ron, they just have bloody gloves, motive, a crime scene, opportunity, etc. If you say I cannot think someone’s obviously guilty, then why can prosecutors try people who they haven’t witnessed personally murdering someone? They’re sure enough based on the evidence to actually try to put him in jail. Why can’t I be sure enough to say he’s guilty and hope his defense sabotages the case? The point about guilt takes us off the issue though. If not OJ, then someone else. The moral question doesn’t change. Would you break a law to put someone in jail? It reminds me of that question where people were asked if they would divert a train to kill a person standing on the tracks if it saves 5 other people. I don’t know about using numbers to determine morality, but I do know that I would break the law which is just written codes to affect change on an actual person who deserves to go to prison. Morally speaking, harming the law is insignificant compared to harming (or not harming) a person. > [@Asimovian](#): > > To me, this entire paragraph (and much of your argument) reeks of “the end justifies the means.” We don’t run the justice system in the U.S. that way for the reasons **Jimmy Chitwood** pointed out with the Batman analogy, among other reasons. > > Defense attorneys (and prosecutors, and judges) are flawed and biased just like jurors. So we have a process that does the best it can (imperfectly) to take those biases out of the equation, and instead follow rules and procedures that will hopefully lead to the right outcome. When you start asking individuals to override those rules in order to reach the “moral” outcome, you’re just bring that bias back into the system. Its sort of like that, but I’m not asking anyone else to follow it. I’m asking people if they would do it themselves, in secret, for specific cases. Like I said, I’m perfectly willing to do this on Wednesday but not on Thursday. It prevents mob mentality, where mistakes are compounded because lots of people do them and one leads to another. I could do this once in my law career and never again, for someone I truly thinks deserves it. I wouldn’t want others to know what I’m doing nor would I tell anyone else to follow my lead. I’m simply justifying my behavior if I do it. I’d like to ask a question for everyone to respond to, if they may. Suppose we have 2 situations. One is a guilty person goes to jail because his defense tanks his case and he loses. The other is that a guilty person is acquitted because his defense fights as hard as it could fight for him and wins. In each case, some amount of injustice occurs. For the former, the harm is to the law and the justice system. For the latter, the harm is to the victims who don’t see justice done. Why is the former worse? > [@Lemur866](#): > > If you really think defense attorneys are morally obligated to help the prosecution put their guilty clients behind bars, what you’re really saying is that there shouldn’t be defense attorneys. Is that the country you want to live in? Is this directed towards me? I don’t know, but I’m going to answer it anyway. Its not one sided. Tanking can be done from the prosecution’s side too. And yes, I want to live in a country where occasionally, when the guilt or innocence is pretty obvious, people do extra-legal things to ensure that the right result occurs. It need not be Batman punching people in the streets, it could happen rarely. I think its equally scary to live in a country where the law is the ultimate barometer of what’s right and any deviation from that, no matter how unjust the law, makes you a criminal. > [@Lemur866](#): > > The thing is, it’s not that I think guilty people deserve a fair trial. It’s that I think everyone deserves to live in a country where the government can’t punish us without a fair trial. We have trials not to protect the guilty but to protect the innocent, and we don’t decide in advance who is guilty and who is not guilty before holding the trial, that’s the purpose of the trial. I think because we cannot read minds or replay history with a time machine, the fairest way we can govern 300 million people is by ensuring that laws be the most fair to the most number of people. But what is most fair to the most number of people isn’t always the most fair to one person. We have to follow the law, everybody has to. But it not so bad if a few people get away with breaking the law if they do good. > [@jsgoddess](#): > > What makes me boggle at this is we in the US used to have a fine, fine system where people decided who was guilty before there was a trial. It was called lynching. History is harsh and things like this did happen. But on the other hand, there were those who smuggled escaped slaves out of the South too. Were those abolitionists equally bad? ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/64 "2015-12-29T21:01:15Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > And again, confessions are notoriously subject to coercion. Some people act like if someone confesses to a crime, that’s it, the case is closed. But people confess to crimes they didn’t commit all the time, for all sorts of reasons. We don’t have to think about confessions. We have a justice system that regularly puts people in jail because one side or the other can convince a random group of 12 people of their version of the events. I’m simply saying that its fine if some people want to move that line and be the final arbiter of the law if only they are convinced. What’s the objective reason why 12 people is better than 1? I’d trust one person who I’m convinced is good over 12 people I don’t know. I’d trust one person who knows the law vs. 12 people who don’t. There’s no arbitrary way a jury is better, its just fairer because we say its fairer. Suppose we had a device that tells a person’s guilt or innocence with 100% accuracy. It can play back the crime, project the person’s thoughts, and allow us to view the incident from any angle at any time. Then would a trial still be fair? Or would it be more fair to simply punish the guilty and let the innocent go? The situations are similar because we’re working with similar degrees of certainty. Remember guys, its still a hypothetical. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2015, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/65 "2015-12-29T21:12:32Z")
> [@](#): > > Why is it moral to defend the guilty? 1. They are in need of assistance. 2. It makes the system work more fairly I buy into the idea behind the adversarial system. There is value in a system where the government is required to prove its case in the face of a defense attorney attempting to poke holes in it. It keeps the government (relatively) honest and keeps (most) innocent people from being convicted. Even defending people who you are “certain” are guilty as charged is important in this regard, and I see no downside in doing so. ---
**Author:** ![sweat209](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@sweat209](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sweat209)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/66 "2015-12-30T00:03:36Z")
> [@bomberswarm2](#): > > On L&O every defense lawyer is a sleazebag, always trying to get their clients confessions thrown out, trying to get all evidence against them thrown out. I get that a lawyer is paid to do some of this, but aren’t they not meant to defend people they know are guilty? Do lawyers to this is real life? If cops do not give you probable cause for search or read you the law of your rights they broke the law. A guy I know at school in Europe had drugs in his house!!! The cops broke the law by having no probable cause for search. So the courts drop all drug charges. Just because you a cop does not mean your above the law. A defense lawyer helps people where cops abuse their power and where cops break the law. Just because you think that person did robbery does not make true that person did robbery. May be the robbery subject got called out on police radio black sweatshirt, black jeans and white t-shirt and just by bad luck of chance 1 in a 100 some one with same clothing in the area. ---
**Author:** ![YogSothoth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/8edcca/32.png) [@YogSothoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YogSothoth)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/67 "2015-12-30T16:26:45Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > 1. They are in need of assistance. > 2. It makes the system work more fairly > > I buy into the idea behind the adversarial system. There is value in a system where the government is required to prove its case in the face of a defense attorney attempting to poke holes in it. It keeps the government (relatively) honest and keeps (most) innocent people from being convicted. > > Even defending people who you are “certain” are guilty as charged is important in this regard, and I see no downside in doing so. I may not sound like it, but I think the system works fairly well. My hypothetical is not something I’d want for everyone to adopt for every case. Like I said, that’d be chaos. But in some instance where the defense or prosecution feels they are on the wrong side of the truth, I’d hope they act accordingly. And I’d disagree that the guilty are in need of assistance. What we actually mean by that is the presumed innocent need assistance. Since everyone is presumed innocent, we must render assistance to them all for fear of becoming a tyranny. But my hypothetical removes that presumption and assumes that you know. In this case, replace “defendant” with “criminal”. The system is only fair because we don’t know for sure. Once we do, the fair thing is for criminals to be punished. It reminds me of that movie Minority Report. In that movie, “pre-cogs” use their future predicting powers to find crime before they happen. The dissenters argue that since these people haven’t committed any crimes yet, its unjust to punish them. They, like you, are too caught up in the process of how justice works rather than the result. For them, and for you, defendants must be put through a trial. But the pre-cogs are 100% accurate (though they did get tricked), and the assumption here is you as the defense lawyer have a pretty good idea of guilt. In that case, the process is meaningless. Its the correct thing to do to assume guilt and punish accordingly. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/68 "2015-12-30T16:39:37Z")
> [@botsgotme](#): > > If a lawyer knows his client is guilty, he cannot conduct an “affirmative” defense-that means that he/she cannot conduct a too-vigorous defense. That’s not what affirmative defense means. > [@](#): > > as a practical matter, the lack of an affirmative defense is a de facto acknowledgement of guilt. This is nonsense. If anything, the opposite is true. An affirmative defense is a _de facto_ acknowledgment that the defendant did commit the act alleged, but that he should not be convicted for other reasons. > [@](#): > > So we move to the next point: if the defense lawyer finds out that the investigators (police) failed to fill out a report correctly, he/she may use this as a point to request that the case be thrown out. Generally, no. A case will not be thrown out because a report was incorrectly filed. It may be dismissed on other “technicalities,” such as errors in the chain of custody or in the charging document. > [@](#): > > This is how atty. Roy Black defended the Kennedy cousin (William Smith) who in fact raped a woman in a drunken Palm Beach ,Florida attack. This is also nonsense. Smith’s case was not dismissed because “reports were incorrectly filled out.” He was acquitted in a jury trial. You may be thinking of the exclusion of evidence of prior conduct from the trial. > [@](#): > > That is why trials have little to do with guilt or innocence-they revolve upon procedure and technicalities. The “procedures” that trials revolve around are nearly all constitutionally mandated. Those are not “technicalities,” but founding principles. In any event, trials have far more to do with guilt or innocence than they do with procedure and technicalities. Outside drug cases, trials rarely turn on whether certain evidence is supressed. It’s not every day you see a post in which every single factual assertion is wrong. Bravo! ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/69 "2015-12-30T17:08:38Z")
> [@YogSosoth](#): > > And I’d disagree that the guilty are in need of assistance. What we actually mean by that is the presumed innocent need assistance. Since everyone is presumed innocent, we must render assistance to them all for fear of becoming a tyranny. But my hypothetical removes that presumption and assumes that you know. In this case, replace “defendant” with “criminal”. The system is only fair because we don’t know for sure. Once we do, the fair thing is for criminals to be punished. No, I meant guilty people (being people) need help now and then when they’re in a jam. Generally the world is not black and white with two classes of people; criminals and non-criminals. All criminals were non-criminals until they did something stupid and wrong. They need help, and sometimes there is no one to help except their lawyer. We don’t help them because they may be innocent. We help them because they’re in trouble and need us. Sure, some are obnoxious assholes. But the same can be said for judges, prosecutors, cops, teachers, etc. I represented a young man who was driving drunk and struck and killed a pedestrian. He was, by all accounts, “obviously guilty.” He wanted to plead guilty. He actually wanted to kill himself, the guilt was so overwhelming. The prosecutor wanted him to agree to a sentence about twice the “standard range,” so we decided to go to trial and see what happened. As it turns out, the pedestrian was at fault and no one, even sober, could have avoided striking him. Thus, the judge (for we waived jury for obvious reasons) found this man guilty of DUI, but not vehicular manslaughter. Fast foward 10 years, the young man has made impressions contributions to his field and his community, works on alochol awareness projects, and has reached out (sucessfully) to the family of the dead guy to reconcile and heal. Not all “not guilty” verdicts have positive outcomes, but it’s also true that not all “criminals” need to to be punished. ---
**Author:** ![botsgotme](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/91b2a8/32.png) [@botsgotme](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/botsgotme)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/70 "2015-12-30T23:39:46Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > That’s not what affirmative defense means. > > This is nonsense. If anything, the opposite is true. An affirmative defense is a _de facto_ acknowledgment that the defendant did commit the act alleged, but that he should not be convicted for other reasons. > > Generally, no. A case will not be thrown out because a report was incorrectly filed. It may be dismissed on other “technicalities,” such as errors in the chain of custody or in the charging document. > > This is also nonsense. Smith’s case was not dismissed because “reports were incorrectly filled out.” He was acquitted in a jury trial. You may be thinking of the exclusion of evidence of prior conduct from the trial. > > The “procedures” that trials revolve around are nearly all constitutionally mandated. Those are not “technicalities,” but founding principles. In any event, trials have far more to do with guilt or innocence than they do with procedure and technicalities. Outside drug cases, trials rarely turn on whether certain evidence is supressed. > > It’s not every day you see a post in which every single factual assertion is wrong. Bravo! Total nonsense; read the OP. This thread concerns the situation where the attorney KNOWS the client to be guilty. In such a case, if the defense succeeds in obtaining an not guilty verdict , is this immoral? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2015, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/71 "2015-12-30T23:53:35Z")
> [@botsgotme](#): > > Total nonsense; read the OP. This thread concerns the situation where the attorney KNOWS the client to be guilty. In such a case, if the defense succeeds in obtaining an not guilty verdict , is this immoral? How can an attorney absolutely _know_ such a thing? ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 10:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/72 "2015-12-31T10:17:14Z")
> [@botsgotme](#): > > Total nonsense; read the OP. This thread concerns the situation where the attorney KNOWS the client to be guilty. In such a case, if the defense succeeds in obtaining an not guilty verdict , is this immoral? I have no dog in this fight, but I’m always amused at people who respond to careful correction of the basis of their positions with “That’s not the point!” ---
**Author:** ![Murf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Murf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Murf)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2015, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288/73 "2015-12-31T13:52:06Z")
I am just amused to find the words lawyer and ethics in the same sentence. There are a lot of valid logical opinions on the often illogical subject of lawyers, law, and criminals. If their was a code of ethics, I’m sure they (lawyers) would find a way around it. It all comes down to the smallest issues, such as, " It all depends on what the meaning of the word is, is". [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-lawyers-supposed-to-follow-a-code-of-ethics/741288.md?page=3)