Litigation Ethics

This chapter will discuss both the legal profession’s ethical obligations as embodied in regulatory instruments, in particular professional conduct rules, as well as the relationship between ethics, morality and legal practice more generally. Ethics concerns itself with “right” and “wrong” (or “good” and “bad”) conduct: ethical conduct being “right” conduct and unethical conduct being “wrong” conduct. In this way, ethical principles and theories provide us with a framework for assessing and reflecting upon our decisions and actions and their moral justifiability. At first instance, these concerns might appear somewhat removed from, or at least tangential to, questions regarding civil procedure and court processes...