ABSTRACT
The public trust lawyers to use their expertise in the best interests of clients, and indirectly, for the public good. There is a perception that lawyers’ professional ethics, as the name suggests, includes ethics. Lawyers could make this perception a reality by including moral principles in legal ethics and thus rekindle deserved esteem for the legal profession.
Theoretical legal ethics (TLE) and professional obligations are the two limbs of lawyers’ legal ethics. Each limb ought to be complementary. Both require moral principles to truly serve lawyers in the practice of law in the 21st century, yet only one limb, professional obligations, has ethical principles within it. If the other limb, TLE, included ethics too, it would remove the contradiction that presently exists between the two limbs. Moral philosophy could provide the ethical principles needed to support each part of legal ethics. The philosophies that could best assist legal practice are Aristotle’s virtue ethics, and Kant’s duty ethics.
