The Hamlyn Lectures 2024 - Frail Professionalism: Lawyers Ethics after the Post Office and other cases (lecture 2 of 3)

This lecture shifts the focus from the individual to their institutional contexts. Lawyers operate in organisations and within courts, nurtured by the cultures of litigation that can reinforce each other's vulnerabilities, giving rise to ‘extraordinary orthodoxies’ that can pollute sensible and just decision-making, driving cover-ups and false narratives. Such orthodoxies are morally loaded and pathologically tactical; they may explain many of the actions of lawyers in the Post Office Scandals and other cases. The idea that these orthodoxies culminate in the creation of legality illusions will be developed to illustrate the need for a richer but simpler, socially meaningful notion of professional ethics that can have practical traction.