December 14, 2021
Partner Andrew Bernstein has written a piece for The Advocates’ Journal on ethical advocacy in which he poses the question: “Are there cases that, with concern for those ethical standards, lawyers should not take?”
Andrew approaches the question from the discussion point of whether law is a profession or a trade. He says the “strongest claim to it being the former is the practitioner’s adherence to ethical standards.”
Below is an excerpt from the start of the piece.
I propose that the answer is yes—although there are not many such cases. When one crosses your desk, however, you should think long and hard before taking it on. What does it look like? In my view, neither the (alleged) conduct of the client nor the viability of the action (assuming it is not frivolous) should be factors. Regarding the former, we know that terrible people deserve lawyers, too. As for the latter, bad cases aren’t the end of the world; we’ve all acted on some, and, occasionally, arguments that seemed terrible to many might just carry the day.
You can read Andrew’s full piece in the Winter 2021 edition of The Advocates’ Journal.
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