Ethics and Legal Professionalism in Australia

Abstract

This book is about lawyers, their professional conduct obligations, and their ethical choices. Its focus is on Australia, but issues relating to lawyer ethics and conduct are commonly experienced in other Anglo common law jurisdictions, such as the UK and the USA, and we have drawn from literature in those jurisdictions where appropriate. Our objective in writing this book is to provide an overview of legal professional ethics. While we have made every effort to present the material in this book as succinctly as possible, this book can only be a guide to the key concepts, relevant rules and potential conflicts relating to legal ethics. We want to encourage discussion and debate-inside and outside the classroom-about professional obligations, their rationales, their expression in the various rules of professional conduct; the relationship between the profession and the public; and the relationship between the profession and the regulating bodies.