One should never confuse what can be done without violating the law with
what is right.


That's a funny thing for a lawyer to say.


Dave wrote:
Not at all. There seems to be an unfortunate trend among many to say that if
anything is morally wrong, there ought to be a law against it. The converse
of that notion is that if there's no law against something it's morally
right. Both are dodges of any responsibility to exercise moral judgment,
consigning one's conscience to the custody of legislators and judges.


Agreed. Attempts to legislate morality (either by omission or comission)
is automatically doomed to failure, for one thing, and my personal
tastes run more towards freedom than straight-jacketing all citizens
according to the cultural whimsy of the current clique in power
(whomever they may be). This is one of the reasons why I regard the U.S.
Constitution as a work of genius.


A lawyer is an expert in what the law allows, and to some extent what the
law allows you to get away with. But a lawyer has no more expertise than his
neighbor in assessing what is morally right. He can raise the question for a
client, and perhaps help the client think it through. But he cannot answer
it for the client.


Sure. But not all lawyers think that way, unfortunately... nor do all
accountants

I'm reminded on a conversation I had recently with one of my partners, who
is an orthodox Jew. He represented another orthodox client whose spouse was
in arrears on child support. One of the remedies available was to have the
delinquent spouse jailed for contempt for failing to pay. He told me that
Jewish law prohibits a Jew from "ratting out" another Jew to be jailed by
the civil authorities, and asked whether he should tell his client that this
option was available. I told him he was ethically obligated under the canons
of ethics to zealously represent the client, and that meant he had to tell
the client the option was available. What else he told her, if anything,
about the moral choice, was beyond the scope of the canons of ethics. To
become the keeper of the client's conscience by withholding the option was
entirely improper.

An interesting dilemma. I assume he also told her that he could not
pursue such action and would need to retain another lawyer.

Your partner basically has to decide which set of rules has the higher
priority... but it seems to me, that by telling the client that she had
the option of putting the ex in jail, he certainly violated the spirit &
intent if not the letter of the Judaic civil authority re/jail prohibition.

I have read a bit about medical ethics situations that were altogether
impossible... also read enough to have a low opinion of most "ethicists."

DSK