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

This lecture will suggest routes to re-invigorating lawyers’ ethics. It will suggest reframing professional thinking so that lucid, practical, meaningful instantiations of integrity and independence match client loyalty. It will ask, does good judgment (and indeed the law) demand a place for morality in professional decision-making? And if so, what kind of morality? And how should uncertainty and risk be managed proportionately and without paternalism? An agenda for professional rule changes, regulatory practice, education, the courts, professional privilege and corporate governance is suggested by the orthodoxies the Post Office Scandal reveals; its victims demand our attention, and this lecture will propose ideas for action.