Legal and Judicial Ethics

By: Atty. Ruben C. Talampas, Jr.

Fillers and Catch-all Phrases Culled from SC Cases

IN GENERAL
– The Law is not a trade nor a craft but a profession. Its basic ideal is to render public service and secure justice for those who seek its aid.
– Practice of law embraces any activity, in or out of court, which requires the application of law, legal principle, practice or procedure and calls for legal knowledge, training and experience. It involves the carrying on of the calling of an attorney, usually for gain, acting in a representative capacity and rendering service to another.
– If it has to remain an honorable profession and attain its basic ideal, those enrolled in its ranks should not only master its tenets and principles but should also, by their lives, accord continuing fidelity to them.
– Legal ethics is the embodiment of all principles of morality and refinement that should govern the conduct of every member of the bar.
– Legal ethics is broadly defined as the living spirit of the profession, which limits yet uplifts it as a livelihood. Specifically, it refers to that branch of moral science which treats of the duties which an attorney owes to the court, to his client, to his colleagues in the profession and to the public.

FOR LAWYERS
– The first and foremost duty of a lawyer is to maintain allegiance to the Republic of the Philippines, uphold the Constitution, and obey the laws of the land.
– For a lawyer is the servant of the law and belongs to a profession to which society has entrusted the administration of law and the dispensing of justice.
– A lawyer shall not reject, except for valid reasons, the cause of the defenseless or the oppressed.
– A lawyer in making known his legal services shall use only true, honest, fair, dignified and objective information or statement of facts.
– A lawyer shall not use or permit the use of any false, fraudulent, misleading, deceptive, undignified, self-laudatory or unfair statement or claim regarding his qualifications or legal services.
– A lawyer shall not divide or stipulate to divide a fee for legal services with a person not licensed to practice law.
– A lawyer shall conduct himself with courtesy, fairness and candor toward his professional colleagues, and shall avoid harassing tactics against opposing counsel.
– For mutual bickering, unjustified recriminations and offensive personalities between brother lawyers not only detract from the dignity of the legal profession but constitute highly unprofessional conduct subject to disciplinary action as well.
– A lawyer shall not, directly or indirectly, encroach upon the professional employment of another lawyer.
– A lawyer is first and foremost, an officer of the court. His duties to the court are more significant than those which he owes to his client.
– A lawyer owes candor, fairness and good faith to the court. If he were to act other than candidly, fairly and truthfully, the administration of justice will suffer as a result thereby.
– The lawyer owes “entire devotion to the interest of the client, warm zeal in the maintenance and defense of his rights and the exertion of his utmost
– A lawyer shall abstain from scandalous, offensive or menacing language or behavior before the courts.
– The relation of attorney and client is strictly personal and highly confidential and fiduciary.
– It demands of an attorney an undivided allegiance, a conspicuous and high degree of good faith, disinterestedness, candor, fairness, loyalty, fidelity and absolute integrity in all his dealings and transactions with his clients and an utter renunciation of every personal advantage conflicting in any way directly or indirectly, with the interest of his client.
– To permit lawyers to resort to unscrupulous practices for the protection of the supposed rights of their clients is to defeat one of the purposes of the state – the administration of justice.
– There is nothing in the duty to a client which makes it necessary for a lawyer to swear to that which is false, to disregard the truth and defy the clear purpose of the law or to obtain for his client something to which he is not justly and fairly entitled.
– The legal profession is a jealous mistress which demands of a lawyer that degree of vigilance and attention expected of a good father of a family.
– A counsel de oficio is expected to render effective service and to exert his best efforts on behalf of an indigent accused. He should as a vanguard in the bastion of justice have a bigger dose of social conscience and a little less of self-interest. He should ever be conscious of his duty to the indigent whom he defends.
– The highly fiduciary and confidential relation of attorney and client requires that the attorney should promptly account for all funds and property received or held by him for the client’s benefit.
– A lawyer shall preserve the confidence and secrets of his client even after the attorney-client relationship is terminated.
– It is the glory of the legal profession that its fidelity to its client can be depended on and that a man may safely go to a lawyer and converse with him upon his rights or supposed rights in any litigation with absolute assurance that the lawyer’s tongue is tied from ever disclosing it.
– Nor should the duty of candor and fairness to the court be sufficient to override the purpose, policy and obligation involved in the doctrine of attorney-client privilege by requiring the disclosure of the perjury committed by the client.
– The protection of the attorney-client privilege has reference to communications which are legitimately and properly within the scope of a lawful employment and does not extend to those made in contemplation of a crime or perpetuation of a fraud.
– While a communication relating to a fraud already committed is privileged, a communication seeking advice as to the commission of a fraud or the establishment of a false claim is and exception to the privilege like the communication to commit a crime.
– He may not, without being guilty of professional misconduct, act as counsel for a person whose interest conflicts with that of his present or former client, nor may he accept employment from a party in the performance of which he may be forced to act in a double capacity or be suspected of divided loyalty.
– The compensation of a lawyer is or should be a mere incident of the practice of law, the primary purpose of which is to render public service.
– The court in the exercise of its exclusive supervisory authority over attorneys as officers of the court should respect and protect the attorney’s lien which is necessary to preserve the decorum and respectability of the legal profession.
– Contempt of court presupposes a contumacious attitude, a floating or arrogant belligerence, a defiance of the court.
– A lawyer may be suspended or disbarred for conviction of a crime involving moral turpitude or for gross immorality committed before admission, such as living adulterously with a woman or contracting a second marriage while his first marriage remains valid and subsisting.
– Moral turpitude means anything which is done contrary to justice, honesty, modesty or good morals, or to any act of vileness, baseness or depravity in the private and social duties that a man owes his fellowmen or to society, contrary to the accepted rule of right and duty between man and man.

FOR JUDGES
– A judge’s conduct should be above reproach and in the discharge of his judicial duties he should be conscientious, studious, thorough, courteous, patient, punctual, just, impartial, fearless of public clamor, and regardless of private influence should administer justice according to law and should deal with the patronage of the position as a public trust; and he should not allow outside matters or his private interests to interfere with the prompt and proper performance of his office.
– Members of the judiciary should so conduct themselves as to be beyond reproach and suspicion, and be free from any appearance of impropriety in their personal behavior not only in the discharge of their official duties but also in their everyday life, for no position exacts a greater demand on moral righteousness and upright ness of an individual that a seat in the Judiciary.
– He should comport himself at all times in such a manner that his conduct, official or otherwise, can bear the most searching scrutiny of the public that looks up to him as the epitome of integrity and justice.
– Like Caesar’s wife, a judge must not only be pure but beyond suspicion.
– For due process of law requires a hearing before an impartial and disinterested tribunal and every litigant is entitled to nothing less than the cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
– An indispensable requisite of due process is that the judge who precides and decides over a proceeding must possess the cold neutrality of an impartial judge.
– The error or mistake of a judge, as basis for disciplinary action, must be gross or patent, malicious, deliberate or in bad faith. It is only when he acts fraudulently or corruptly or with gross ignorance that he may be administratively held liable.
– In disciplinary actions against judges based on res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself), there is on the face of the assailed decision, an in explicable grave error bereft of any redeeming feature, a patent railroading of a case to bring about an unjust decision, or a manifestly deliberate intent to wreak an injustice against a hapless party.
– The res ipsa loquitur doctrine does not except or dispense with the necessity of proving the facts on which the inference of evil intent is based. It merely expresses the clearly sound and reasonable conclusion that when such facts are admitted or are already shown by the record, and no credible explanation that would negate the strong inference of evil intent is forthcoming, no further hearing to establish them to support a judgment as to the culpability of a respondent is necessary.