Making lawyers moral : Ethical codes and moral character

Nicolson, Donald (2005) Making lawyers moral : Ethical codes and moral character. Legal Studies, 25 (4). pp. 601-626. ISSN 0261-3875

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    Abstract

    This article argues that professional codes of conduct cannot perform the important task of ensuring that lawyers uphold high ethical standards. Instead, moral behaviour by lawyers requires the development of fixed behavioural attributes relevant to legal practice - what may be called a lawyer's professional moral character. At the same time, however, along with other factors, professional codes are important in that they can either contribute to or detract from the successful development of professional moral character. If so, it is argued that in order to have the best chance of assisting the character development of lawyers, codes should neither take the form of highly detailed or extremely vague, aspirational norms, but should instead guide ethical decision-making by requiring them to consider a wide range of contextual factors when resolving ethical dilemmas.

    Author(s):Nicolson, Donald ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3404-8793
    Item type:Article
    ID code:917
    Keywords:professional code of conduct, lawyers, moral behaviour, legal practice, ethical dilemmas, Law (General)
    Subjects:Law > Law (General)
    Department:Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) > School of Law > Law
    Depositing user: Miss Jacqueline Miller
    Date deposited:27 May 2007
    Last modified:18 Oct 2019 07:20
    Related URLs:
    URI:https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/917
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