Four Ethical Approaches To Lawyering

I INTRODUCTION

In the context of Australian legal institutions, Christine Parker has identified four main ethical approaches to lawyering that are commonly reflected in ethics scholarship and the everyday practice of lawyers. These approaches are the adversarial advocate, responsible lawyering, moral activism and ethics of care. Although, some lawyers might use a combination of these ethical approaches to handle certain situations, most lawyers will often have one dominant approach.

II DISCUSSION

The kind of ethical approach that I would adopt for lawyering is directly relevant to my view on whether the concern of legal ethics is the morality of laws, the morality of clients or the morality of lawyers. An exploration of these three key

Whilst this topic is particularly prevalent in the study of jurisprudence it is also of fundamental importance to legal ethics. Looking at whether I favour the positivist or natural law perspective with regards to this debate, will give a clear indication as to which of Parker’s four approaches to lawyering would be most suitable .

Positivists such as John Austin and H L A Hart advocate the separability thesis that is they believe in a clear conceptual separation of law from morality. They recognise that there are cases where law and morality do overlap, but they do not think that there is a necessary connection between the two concepts and this is where my view diverges. The central internal perspective of law cannot be understood without reference to the moral reasons that ultimately bring law into

After my analysis it would seem that reframing this debate to look at which of the four ethical approaches best tackles all three areas of morality is indeed the best way forward. Based on the work of countless legal ethicists and theorists and my own perspective, the moral activist ethical approach is the most multi-faceted and uniquely positioned of the four approaches, to address concerns relating to the morality of law, clients and lawyers.

The approach requires that lawyers take advantage of their position to improve the morality of law through public interest lawyering and law reform activities. They should also contribute to the morality of clients by using client counselling in order to persuade clients to make moral decisions. These kinds of actions will in turn develop the morality of the