What are legal ethics and why are they important to the legal system?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Lawyers often suffer from a negative public image, which is one reason the legal profession places considerable emphasis on legal ethics. Ethics refers to the study and analysis of what constitutes good or bad conduct (Pollock 2012). Legal ethics represents a specific type of ethics. First, it is an example of applied ethics, in which ethical principles are applied to specific issues. Legal ethics is also an example of professional ethics, because it involves the behavior of a profession, in this case the legal profession. All ethical systems, legal ethics included, have a moral component. But morality and ethics are different. Whereas morality emphasizes a set of moral absolutes, legal ethics involves the difficult task of helping lawyers sort out the best option when perhaps no good options exist. Legal ethics is of critical importance because the American legal system is based on the adversarial system, which stresses verbal combat. At its basis, this system represents a fight between opposing viewpoints, and the use of legal ethics is one way to regulate this verbal combat to ensure a fair fight. Legal ethics emphasizes protecting clients by ensuring that they have competent attorneys to forcefully present their cases. Legal ethics also seeks to promote public respect for the legal system.