The Hamlyn Lectures 2024 - Frail Professionalism: Lawyers Ethics after the Post Office and other cases (lecture 1 of 3)

This lecture will consider what drives good lawyers towards ethical blunders. Traditional notions of lawyers’ ethics, ideas such as fearlessness, zeal and Cab Rank neutrality, will be examined, as will the human frailties that all humans, even – perhaps especially – lawyers, face. We will consider how such ideas can drive lawyers towards disaster. Examples will be taken from the Post Office Scandal but also elsewhere. I will suggest traditional notions of ethics are flawed; that rather than protect the rule of law, they render it vulnerable.