Not so long ago, while I was serving as Consul General at the Philippine Embassy in Canada, I had the opportunity to visit Davao City, my birthplace and my home to this day.
There are many times when we take for granted what we have. While I do not wish to convey false humility as regards my work, I also wish to say that I feel no sense of self-importance in my title whatsoever. And that is the God-honest truth. Thus, while I was very happy to have crossed paths with a former teacher, I found her exuberant reference to my work slightly amusing.
Litigation is both romanticized and vilified in modern Philippine culture. Trial lawyers are seen as briefcase warriors of right, truth, and justice, protecting individuals’ rights and advancing the common good. Yet, they are also seen as the personification of avarice and self-centeredness, profiting from multi-million person verdicts that drive good doctors out of practice and encouraging frivolous lawsuits. These desperate images in the minds of the common Juan reflect the moral complexity of the lawyer’s role and provide the societal backdrop of professional regulation in this area.
A critical issue facing the criminal justice system today is how best to promote ethical behavior among lawyers in client representation. The legal profession has left much of a lawyer’s daily activity unregulated, in favor of a general admonition to “seek justice.” Professional norms function only if those working with a given ethical framework recognize the system’s implicit dependence on character. A code of professional conduct in which this dependence is not recognized is both content-less and corrupting.
