Models of legal ethics and theoretical considerations of their application in practice

Article discusses interaction between general ethical theories and models of legal ethics from the perspective of their practical application. The professional conduct of lawyers is governed both by legal norms and by requirements of ethics. However, if the legal responsibility of a lawyer is relatively well defined, the ethical responsibility often remains to be fully elucidated. Meanwhile, performing his professional duties lawyer, it often faced with ethical dilemmas, where it is difficult to find a clear answer to the question what a lawyer's behavior is justified from the point of view of ethics. The problem in part is dealt with codification of certain rules of ethical conduct. However, rules of conduct themselves alone are not able to resolve all the ethical issues and problems encountered by lawyers in practice. This is because it is not possible all aspects of ethically controversial situations, in which practicing lawyer sometimes find himself, to describe by written rules. Even more so, that ethics is not confined to the explicit rules. Every more profound discussion about how to apply the provisions of the code of ethics is necessarily discussion about what ethical theory should be used to solve ethically problematic issues. Ability to rely on more than one ethical theory not only provides a better chance of finding answers to the questions raised, but in turn complicates the situation. Therefore, ethical philosophy, on which relies ethics authority, is crucial for the evaluation practicing lawyer’s conduct. Various authors writing on legal ethics interchangeably use such terms as legal ethics models or approaches, and legal ethics. Such indiscriminate use of terms usually point to lack of deeper reflection on the one hand on differences between ethical model (approach) and moral theory, and their interaction on the other hand.[...]Privatinės teisės katedraTeisės fakultetasVytauto Didžiojo universiteta