Legal ethics refers to the body of codes and, in some cases, statutes that define and regulate the professional practice of law. Legal ethics also has a normative meaning expressed in the branch of applied or professional ethics that studies the connection between legal practice and the principles that should govern such practice. These two aspects of legal ethics are not independent of one another. This is most clearly evident when existing codes of conduct are revised or modified to better express the legal profession’s or society’s views about what those ethical standards ought to be.