Can the bioethical principles provide simple signposts for ethical legal practice? Some thoughts on using the bioethical principles as broad guidelines for ethical conduct in developing Commonwealth countries in the context of the English Solicitors’ Code of Conduct and other ethical rules

This chapter is aimed at practitioners, aspiring lawyers, vocational law school instructors and university law teachers concerned with legal ethics in the developing world, particularly in British Commonwealth countries. It is not aimed at developed world legal practitioners, or legal ethicists and legal philosophers teaching in a developed world environment. The teaching of legal ethics in developing countries at both universities and vocational schools usually takes the form of recitation of the local Bar Association rules with very little emphasis on ethical principles – and in many instances, the latter are completely avoided.1 There are probably very few full credit legal ethics courses at Commonwealth university law faculties in developing countries, and the position is likely to be similar in some developed Commonwealth countries as well.2 It has been suggested that, instead of stand-alone legal ethics courses, a ‘pervasive ethics’3 or ‘whole-of-curriculum’4

approach should be adopted at universities, in which ethics learning and teaching occur across the law school curriculum.5