• Lawyers belongs to a privileged class of

professionals. Main mission is to attain

justice in all aspects of society

• who constitutes the natural bond
between the people and the
government.

• Have tremendous influence on public affairs

Code of Professional Responsibility
• assumes the tasks of a mediator or
conciliator

• In 1997 the IBP formulated Committee
on Professional Responsibility,
Discipline and Disbarment
Legal Profession
 membership in a profession entails
responsibilities and privileges
 responsibilities arise from relationship
with clients, the courts, the legal
profession and the society

 refers to a group of men pursuing a
learned art as a common calling in the
spirit of a public service
 pursuit of the learned art in the spirit of
public service is the primary purpose
 gaining a livelihood is incidental
Lawyer Relationships
 may be public or private which is governed by
contract subject to rules of law and canons of
professional ethics.

Negative connotations
 guns for hire 
 always remember when you go into attorney’s door,
you will have to pay for it, first or last(Anthony
Trollop)
 society of men among us, bred upon from their youth
in the art of proving, by words multiplied for the
purpose, that white is black and black is white accdg.
as they are paid
Social Function Served
 legal profession as one of the key institutions of social
order
 responsible of structuring the conflicts of society
because they are capable of peaceful resolutions.


“He should be a person of irreproachable virtue and
goodness. He should be well-read in the world circle of
the arts and sciences. He be fit for the administration of
public affairs and to govern the commonwealth by his
councils, establish it by his laws and correct it by his
examples”-Kent
Constitution and Lawyers

Constitution-lawyer’s bible
1973 Constitution guarantees the right of the
accused to counsel in all criminal prosecution

and even earlier, when a person is under
investigation for the commission of an offense.

• not limited to the accused in criminal cases

• Free access of the courts shall not be denied to
person by reason of poverty.
Spheres of Public Responsibility

1. Instrumental-all purpose social

engineers 
2. Counseling or protective
function
3. Sphere of Conflict
4. Sphere of civic wisdom
 As lawyers see lawyers
survey of the legal profession by the Law
Research Council and funded by the UP Law
center
SA A N D SD
1. Most lawyers are willing to 9.2 44.5 17.6 25.0 3.8
take personal risks when
necessary to assure that justice
is done

2. The legal profession does not 2.4 23.1 14.8 53.1 6.6
help individuals and group in
ensuring access to legal services
 SA A N D SD
3. Many legal practitioners are 9.2 48.1 11.4 28.2 3.0
not fully conscious of the need
to share the responsibility of
attaining justice for every
citizen

4.For many law practitioners, 14.7 57.9 9.9 15.13 2.2


their rendition of legal services
has been reduced to a mere
means of earning a living

5. Most lawyers conceive their 12.6 59.9 12.8 19.2 1.4

legal practice in terms of
winning cases regardless of
the consequences of their
actions
 SA A N D SD
6. The legal profession is one of 40.6 45.7 7.4 5.6 0.7
the most prestigious and
respected professions in the
Philippines

7. There is of late a general loss 6.3 36.3 16.1 35.0 6.3

of confidence in the services of
the legal profession as a means
to attain justice

8. The administration of justice 20.8 55.7 10.3 12.6 0.7
retains its validity and force
only when it is viewed by legal
practitioners in terms of the
larger interest of society
 SA A N D SD

9. To keep pace with the 40.6 45.7 7.4 5.6 0.7

development of society and be


 Lawyers and Legal Aid

 lawyers public responsibility is legal aid to

the needy, particularly in criminal cases


 65% of 896 respondents said that the rich,
the affluent, the moneyed, the high income
group, the upper class get legal services
when they want these and 78% of 881 total
sampling expressed that the group with the
least access are the poor.
Assignment de
officio/voluntary/charity
concern of the IBP, of the government
and of some other agencies

Voluntary legal assistance
-Citizens Legal Aid Society of the
Philippines(CLASP)
-U.P. Women Lawyers Circle(WILOCI)
-Integrated Bar of the Philippines(IBP)
 APOSTASY

Is the formal disaffiliation from or
abandonment or renunciation of a
religion by a person.

act of giving up or renouncing belief

or allegiance/loyalty
 ILLUSTRATION OF APOSTASY
IN THE LEGAL PROFESSION

 A. Denouncing member of the Supreme Court

 B. Acts libelous to the courts

 C. Appearing in a court 2years after execution of the FINAL

JUDGMENT.

 D. Lawyer filing unintelligible and undecipherable petition

 E. Submitting maliciously falsified documents while facing

charges of moral turpitude.
 F. Making false assertion that his life is threatened by the
opposing litigant as ground for transfer of venue for
hearing the case.


 G. Lawyer who advises his client to escape prison
because habeas corpus was denied.

 H. Negligence in observing the reglementary period for

the Right to APPEAL to the SUPREME COURT

 I. Lawyers who goes to court and ARGUE completely

UNPREPARED

 J. Lawyers who lack candor and are intellectually

dishonest when arguing before the court.
 K. Lawyers who intentionally omit
unfavorable or adverse facts in petitions to
mislead the court.

 L. Lawyers that desperately intend to win cases
BASED on Technicalities ONLY

 M. Lawyers who foist BIZARRE

THEORIES upon the COURT.
II. THE COURT’S CONTROVERSIAL
MINUTE RESOLUTION

 Criticism expressed against the Court’s of rejecting
petitions by minute resolution.

 The frustration of a lawyer who tediously collates the

facts and for many weary hours meticulously marshalls
his arguments, only to have his effort ultimately
rebuffed with a terse unadorned denial.

 The proper role of the Supreme Court is to decide only

those cases which present questions whose resolutions
will have immediate importance beyond the particular
facts and parties involved.
 REVIEW OF COURT OF APPEALS’
DECISION, DISCRETIONARY

 A. When the Court of Appeals has decided a question
of substance, not theretofore determined by the
Supreme Court, or has decided it in a way probably
not in accord with law or with the applicable
decisions of the Supreme Court.

 B. When the Court of Appeals has so far departed

from the accepted and usual course of judicial
proceedings, or so far sanctioned such departure by a
lower court, as to call for the exercise of the power of
supervisions
 III. LAWYERS’ CRITICISM OF
COURTS AND JUDGES

 Our decisions and all our official actions are public property and
the press and the people have the undoubted right to comment
on them, criticize and censure them. (Supreme Court of
Nebraska)

 Judicial officers, like other public servants must answer for their
official actions before the chancery of public opinion.

 It is the cardinal condition of every criticism of the courts that it

shall be bona fide, and shall not spill over the walls of decency
and propriety. It must possess the quality of judiciousness and
must be informed by perspective and infused by philosophy.
 IV. OFFICERS OF THE COURTS

 A person takes an oath when he is admitted to the Bar which
is designed to impress upon him his responsibilities. He
thereby becomes an officer of the court on whose shoulders
rests the grave responsibility of assisting the courts in the
proper, fair, speedy and efficient administration of justice.

 Unfortunately many law practitioner, forgetting his sacred

mission as a sworn public servant and his exalted position as
an officer of the court, has allowed himself to become an
instigator of controversy and a predator of conflict instead of a
mediator of concord and conciliator for compromise, a
virtuoso of technicality in the conduct of litigation instead of a
true exponent of the primacy of truth and moral justice.
 IV. OFFICERS OF THE COURTS

 I love our common profession, and love all who
honor it. I honor from the bottom of my heart.
If I am anything it is the law, that notable
profession, that sublime science which we all
pursue, that has made me what I am. It has
been my ambition, coeval with my early
manhood, nay with my youth, to thought
worthy to be ranked under the banner of that
profession. (Daniel Webster)
 BEING A LAWYER: THE PROBLEM
OF VALUES

 Fried, The Lawyer as Friend: The Moral Foundations of the
Lawyer-Client Relationship

 Can a good lawyer be a good person? The question troubles

lawyers and law students alike. They are troubled by the
demands of loyalty to one’s client and by the fact that one can
win approval as a good, maybe even great, lawyer even though
that loyalty is engrossed by over-privileged or positively
distasteful clients. How, they ask, is such loyalty compatible
with that devotion to the common good characteristic of high
moral principles? And whatever their views of the common
good, they are troubled because the willingness of lawyers to
help their clients use the law to the prejudice of the weak or the
innocent seems morally corrupt.
 The lawyer is conventionally seen as a professional
devoted to his client’s interests and as authorized,
if not in fact required, to do some things (though
not anything) for that client which he would not do

for himself. In this essay I consider the
compatibility between the traditional conception
of the lawyer’s role and the ideal of moral purity –
the ideal that one’s life should be lived in
fulfillment of the most demanding moral
principles, and not just barely within the law. My
inquiry is one of morals: Does the lawyer whose
conduct and choices are governed only by the
traditional conception of the lawyer’s role, which
the ( profession’s code) reflects, lead a professional
life worthy of moral approbation, worthy of
respect - and his own?
 I. THE CHALLENGE TO THE
TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION

CRITICISMS
1. The ideal of professional loyalty to
one’s client permits, even demands, an
allocation of the lawyer’s time, passion,
and resources in ways that are not
always maximally conducive to the
greatest good of the greatest number.
 CRITICISMS

2. It addresses not the misallocation of
scarce resources, which the lawyer’s
exclusive concern with his client
interest permits, but the means which
this loyalty appears to authorize,
tactics which procure advantages for
the client at the direct expense of some
identified opposing party.
 THE LAWYER AS FRIEND.

 A. The Thesis
 B. The Utilitarian Explanation
 C. Self, Friendship and Justice
 D. Special – Purpose Friends
 The Choice of Clients: The
Question of Distribution

Myth:

Maldistribution of a scarce resource i.e.,

The aid of counsel .

Fact:

Once the relation has been taken up, it is the

client’s needs which hold the reins—legally and
morally.
 Question:

Must the lawyer expend his efforts where
they will do the most good?

 Or where they will draw the largest fee,

provide the most excitement and bask in
flattery of his greatness?
 
 But Moral obligation is greater than moral
inclination

 Because the moral position of the lawyer rests on the

claim that he takes up his client’s interest irrespective
of their merits
 The Choice of Means

1. Staying Within the Law

 As the Client’s legal friend

2. Immoral Means

 Distasteful and Dishonorable Scheme but is not

necessarily illegal
 The Lawyer’s Role in Society

1. Legal Adviser

2. Advocate of Law

 In either capacity, a lawyer is supposed to know the

law.
 Ultimately, the role of lawyer in a society is the
administration of justice.
 Working Knowledge

1. Spirit of the Law

2 Aspects:
a. The specific purpose of a given legislation

b. The part it plays within the context of the prevailing

legal system

2. Mechanics
 Working Knowledge

 A broad literary background

 A good knowledge of the history of civilization

 Proficiency is logic and mathematics

 A substantial cultural foundation

THANK YOU FOR
LISTENING!