ABSTRACT
The first limb of legal ethics, positivist theoretical legal ethics (TLE), provides a template for legal practice. It influences the second limb, lawyers’ professional obligations. Previous chapters have shown that positivist TLE has created problems for lawyers in both parts of legal ethics.
The purpose of Chapter 7 is to present a new moral model of TLE that applies the moral philosophies of Aristotle and Kant to address these problems. This is a significant reform of legal ethics as it adds a moral role to lawyers' primary role of giving only legal advice.
Step I in this new model shows the importance for lawyers of developing moral sensitivity to identify ethical issues in client instructions. Step II elaborates and guides lawyers in the development of moral reasoning by drawing upon their moral integrity. Practical wisdom is also required in the reasoning process when lawyers assess how clients will implement their advice. Steps I and II are applied to the decisions of James Hardie’s lawyers, Allens. The hypothesis is that a new moral TLE would have better supported Allens’s professionalism and led to more ethical decisions by its clients. Step III is lawyers’ dialogue with clients to explain their advice.
