Lawyers and ethics

MY father was a lawyer, and as early as when I was in Grade 5 or 6, I already started helping around in his office which actually was in our house also.

That’s when I discovered I was pretty good at typing some papers, but quite a disaster when it came to filing them. My father finally gave up on me in the latter, but was happy with me in the former. He had a good typist who offered his services gratis et amore.

Those where very memorable years when aside from learning things in school, I had the feeling I was learning a lot more in my father’s office. I felt I had the edge over my classmates in school because of what I got from my father’s office.

There were times we had to sleep late to finish some job, and I sacrificed a little of my youthful preferences just to be with my father whom I idolized. But I was convinced it was all worth it. I actually did not miss anything from life in the streets and moviehouses with my friends.

There were also amusing moments. Many of my father’s clients were simple people from the towns and mountains of Bohol. They even would often stay in our house and would take their meals with us.

So, I got familiar with all the idiosyncracies of the different places, especially their accents, their sense of humor, their simple ways, etc. I laughed most of the time with them, but there were times when I also cried with them. The human drama of their cases was more absorbing than what I read in novels or saw in movies.

The evening before a trial, my father would usually rehearse the clients on how to answer the possible queries during the hearing. In this area, most of the time I had fun just watching the simple folks grapple with the intricacies of logic and legal defense. But there were also moments when I asked myself whether what my father did was right.

I was not at that time into spiritual exercises or pious practices, and much less was I clear about moral principles. But something told me there were things that did not sound quite right.

Like when the client would earnestly give his answer to a question my father asked, which I considered to be the real answer, and my father would tell him to modify it or simply to keep quiet on a certain point.

I didn’t like the idea that my father would earn his living for us, a big family of 11 children, by tampering with the truth. I preferred to sell fish in the market than to do that. But I did not know how to confront him.

Finally, when I gathered enough courage, I asked him about my doubts, and surprisingly he was very happy to engage me with what I considered as a very paternal explanation of his legal profession. My father also had a very tender heart.

He assured me everything was ethical, and that he was not doing anything wrong just to provide for the family. And then very patiently he told me about what lawyers were supposed to do with their clients, especially those whom my father already suspected or was even sure were guilty of the accusation.

He told me everyone has to the right to be defended, even the one who is guilty. And the lawyer’s job is to help the client defend himself along the technicalities of a legal trial.

He told me the lawyers, like everybody else, should not tamper with the truth, but neither is the accused client obliged to incriminate himself. The burden of proof lies on the accuser. The accused is always presumed innocent unless proven otherwise. This is a legal process, my father said, not the Last Judgment before God where absolutely everything would be in the open.

And so the accused client may not have to say everything that he knows, and when asked directly about something that might incriminate him, he can remain silent, which should not be automatically interpreted as incriminating him.

I must confess that it took me time before I could feel at ease with this explanation. Even up to now I feel a little discomfort. But I can see the validity of the lawyer’s job to defend his client, however guilty he may be or not.

Given this predicament, the ideal lawyer should be no less than a saint, otherwise, the temptation to play around with the truth would just be irresistible.