Many of a lawyer's professional tasks are fixed in the Rules of Professional Conduct, as well as substantive and practical law. A lawyer should endeavor to achieve the highest level of skill, to improve the law and the legal profession and to exemplify the legal profession's ideals of public service. A lawyer is also adviser by personal sense of right and wrong and the approbation of professional stares.
A lawyer's responsibilities as a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system and a public citizen are usually concordant. Thus, when an opposing party is well represented, a lawyer can be enthusiastic advocate on behalf of a client and at the same time assume that justice is being done. Also, a lawyer can be certain that preserving client confidences usually serves the public interest because people are more likely to seek legal advice, and thus pay attention to their legal obligations, when they know their communications will be private. There are conflicting responsibilities encountered in the nature of law practice. Virtually all difficult moral problems arise from conflict between a lawyer's tasks to clients, to the legal system and to the lawyer's own interest in remaining an upright person while earning a satisfactory living. The Rules of Professional Conduct fix terms for resolving such conflicts. Within the structure of these Rules can arise many difficult issues of professional carefulness.
In addition a lawyer may serve as a third-party impartial, a nonrepresentational role helping the parties to resolve an argument or other matter. Some of these Rules relate directly to lawyers who are or have served as third-party neutrals. There are Rules that apply to lawyers who are not lively in the practice of law or to practicing lawyers even when they are acting in a amateur capacity. A lawyer’s behavior should be conventional to the requirements of the law, both in professional service to clients and in the lawyer’s business and personal affairs.
A lawyer should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to annoy or threaten others. It is a lawyer’s duty, to challenge the morality of official action. The legal profession is largely independent. Although other professions also have been awarded powers of independence, the legal profession is unique in this respect because of the close relationship between the profession and the processes of government and law enforcement. This connection is obvious in the fact that ultimate authority over the legal profession is vested largely in the courts.
Lawyers play a fundamental role in the preservation of society. The realization of this role requires an understanding by lawyers of their relationship to our legal system.
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