Sustaining professional ethics in legal business

Lawyers are legal professionals who offer their services by using their legal knowledge, skills, and expertise to people, and in return, they will get a certain number of profits or money. Lawyers who own legal firms, either as a sole proprietor or as a partner in a partnership firm, are required to observe business ethics which include being honest, responsible, willing to cooperate, and maintaining integrity and dignity in the legal profession. In Malaysia, lawyers are governed by the Legal Profession Act 1976 (LPA), Rules and Rulings of the Bar Council, and other relevant laws such as the Partnership Act 1961, Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2009, and Anti-Money Laundering and Anti-Terrorism Financing Act 2001 (AMLATFA). They must also follow specified Rules in managing their firms and clients’ accounts when keeping accounting records. Thus, it is important to ensure the legal firm and its accounts reports are properly managed only by competent employees and reliable accountants. Failure to manage their finances may affect their business survival. Lawyers also are not able to continue their practice if the account report is not submitted when applying for renewal of their Sijil Annual and the Practising Certificate (PC). This paper seeks to study the importance of having proper business management and observing ethics in legal business as well as the consequences of failure to maintain proper business ethics and conduct. The study applies qualitative methods in obtaining the result. The findings show that many lawyers have violated business ethics while providing legal services to people and their misconduct has affected their business, profession, and their clients