A Federal Court judge encouraged barristers to question their client’s instructions and push back if it comes close to breaching their ethics.
In a speech delivered at the Francis Burt Chambers Continuing Professional Development Dinner, Justice Craig Colvin encouraged barristers to prioritise their ethics when facing pressure from their clients, particularly when it comes to the way a case should be run.
If they question instructions and do things “the way you believe they should be done”, it will improve their advocacy, develop a better rapport with judges, enhance the fairness of the court system, and, above all, bring greater enjoyment to their jobs, Justice Colvin said.
“No client can ask or expect a lawyer to advance the client’s own interests in a way that an ethical and competent lawyer would not. As officers of the court, lawyers must always exercise professional judgements in accordance with good ethical practice,” he added.
“In carrying out your instructions, your responsibility is to act only as a good lawyer would. You are not a ‘hired gun’. You are not the client’s proxy. You are a lawyer who trusts in your own skill and character.”
The idea of lawyers as officers of the court provides that every lawyer is first and foremost a person who seeks to uphold and promote the administration of justice, “not just as it is but as it ought to be”.
Justice Colvin said it also recognises that for the sustenance of a fair court system, it is necessary for silks to be guided by the understanding that their actions “sustain the law as an institution and frame perceptions as to whether it can be trusted”.
He told the silks in attendance that they must ensure a keen focus on the way the law as a whole should be administered, rather than a concern for their individual responsibilities to a particular case.
“Every one of you is consequential when it comes to the way the courts work and the law is administered.
“Every day, the way you act, the things you say, and the decisions you make about how to present a case have consequences for the way the legal system is administered and experienced by those caught up in its processes,” Justice Colvin said.
Should lawyers abandon this, the law would work to the advantage of the vested interest of individual clients in the status quo and facilitate the exploitation of its advantages for them, he went on.
“As I have sought to explain, that is not the approach of an ethical lawyer. Instead, to be an ethical lawyer is to be guided at all times by your own considered and informed view as to what the due administration of justice requires,” Justice Colvin said.
