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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 4 page paper discusses various perspectives on legal ethics, including utilitarianism, Plato's Gorgias and others. Bibliography lists 7 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_HVLegEth.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
right and right. Ethics also provide codes that help professionals conduct their businesses honorably. This paper examines the issue of ethics in the legal profession, using several philosophical viewpoints
(utilitarianism, Kant, Aristotle and others) as the bases for discussion. Discussion Ethics is a vital component of the practice of law: "The foundation of the legal profession
is its strong commitment to ethical standards and behaviour. Indeed ... ethics are the glue that holds the legal profession together and keeps it from becoming an industry" (Williams,
2002). Another source points out that most people think lawyers in general are unethical; to which those who defend the profession respond "by arguing that the ethical duty of
the lawyer is to serve the cause of the client rather than to judge or to ensure the morality of that cause" (Reavley, 2001). Reavley finds this argument unconvincing,
stating that its unethical for an attorney to argue a point to the jury that he knows to be false, even if winning that point will win his case (Reavley,
2001). He believes that its impossible for an attorney to separate his professional conduct from his personal morality; and that "everything we do, whether in the courtroom or on
the street ... must and will reflect our personal moral standards" (Reavley, 2001). Those moral standards, Reavley implies, must reflect the highest ethical standards. So, if ethics is
vital to the practice of law, whose ethical standards do attorneys meet? Reavley might be said to be embracing Nicomachean ethics, a perspective that "focuses on the importance of habitually
behaving virtuously and developing a virtuous character," which is the same as saying that lawyers have to develop high personal moral standards which are the same as their professional ones
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