A Comprehensive Report on Ethical Framework of UK Legal Profession

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the legal profession in the UK, highlighting the differences between barristers and solicitors, and examining the ethical principles that underpin the UK legal system. It discusses key concepts such as equality, fairness, retrospective legislation, and due process, emphasizing their importance in ensuring access to justice. The report also explores the ethical considerations related to conflicts of interest and the application of legal ethics in various contexts. Furthermore, it references significant legal cases that have shaped the UK legal landscape, demonstrating the judiciary's role in upholding human rights and ensuring governmental accountability. The document concludes by emphasizing the significance of case law and judicial precedent within the UK's common law system, highlighting the importance of a dual lawyer system for all citizens.

INDIVIDUAL
REPORT
1

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
TASKS.............................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................8
2

Introduction
The legal profession in England and Wales is basically divided into basic different categories
according to the prevailing legal system. Present report is based on the discussion of difference
between the set up of legal profession in UK and other countries where there are only one type of
lawyers (Carey, 2018). There is a discussion of the legal profession of UK according to the
ethical perspective and various different aspects that are related to this legal profession.
TASKS
The legal profession is divided into major categories:
First is Barristers who are the members of Bar Council of Wales and England and they have the
right of audiences in court. These are basically governed by the bar standard sport and each
barrister has to be the member of Inn of court. Barristers are generally the self-employed and
they are operating in different set of Chamber but are not working in any law firm (Legal systems
in the UK (England and Wales): overview, 2020). There is a directory that is listening all the
known barristers by their names and also searches for different sets of chambers.
Another category is solicitors who are members of the law Society the regulation of solicitors is
according to the independent body that is named as solicitor’s regulatory authority. The
regulation of solicitors is according to the independent body and there is a list of test book for the
conduct of solicitors. Solicitors do not generally possess any diet of audiences in court but they
possess in only some exceptional cases (Hudson, 2017). They have the responsibility of legal
Research and their clients in some legal negotiation further responsible to pass the cases to the
barristers if there is requirement to take actions in court. There are very rare situations in which a
client is willing to directly employ a barrister but they moved to solicitors (Hanretty,. and
Vaughan, 2017).
Certain principles on which law of UK is based and is related with the ethical perspective of law:
1) Equality:
3

Law requires that in every case that is similar to each other they must be similar treatment. You
citizen possess the right to be protected from any type of discrimination and it can be said that
one person cannot be treated unfairly because of any sexual religious or ethnic views. According
to views of AV Dicey, it can be said that equality before law is one of the most important
concepts and all officials must be dealt in the same court as the ordinary citizens. There is also a
demonstration that government of general masses that government must not unjustly lenient on
Any official (Nutt, 2020).
2) Fairness:
All the procedures and law must be available equally to every citizen and is must be written
down according to the clarity and prevention of any type of unfair enforcement and
discrimination (Stokes, 2019) .
3) Retrospective legislation:
The rule of law makes sure that a person cannot be tried for any type of offence if their
behaviour has not been offence when the person has committed it (Lock, 2017). This aspect is
also related with legislation having retrospective effect means lost and effectively broken before
they are coming in force. Examples are the war crimes act 1991 and many taxation related laws
(United Kingdom Law: Case law, 2020).
4) Due process:
It Refers that a person can be in present or punished if there is sufficient evidence and substantial
of their guilt. It has to be concerned with people receiving a fair trial before they are proven
guilty. A person has a liberty that they can be taken away from court and if they are
demonstrated for the guilty by any evidence then there is requirement to award the person for all
damages because of the loss of personal liberty (Lloyd, 2020).
Above discussed are some of the principles according to which the law of UK has been based
and it helps in providing all the situations equal access to rights in Crisis situation.
There exists a complete difference in the legal framework of UK and other countries where there
4

is presence of one type of lawyers only for citizens. There are certain ethical principles because
of which people are able to access and get proper access to all the legal ethics and facilities and
such some of the aspects are mentioned below:
According to views of Mary Ann Glendon, 2020 Principle of legal ethics is related to conduct in
legal practice but also helps in reflecting the basic premises assumptions and method of a legal
system in which a lawyer is operating (Parpworth, 2018). Democratic countries like United
States Japan Canada and the member states of European Union this is a concept that consist of
fundamental assumption of a typical lawyer. This principle is also related to engagement of
representing the private interest and has a consideration of public responsibility. Lawyer is a
officer of the court who is responsible for playing the critical role in upholding of the integrative
legal system (Legal ethics, 2020).
Areas of application:
Conflict of interest:
Lawyer may face with the question to represent two or more clients who possess a conflict of
interest (Fisher, 2018). The legal system presents a lawyer from representing the client whose
interest is in conflict with one another. In the American legal system this type of provision has
three concepts. First is that attorney is not permitted to represent more than one line in order to
interest of one must forego the advance of conflicting interest of another (Mantouvalou, 2018) .
Second a person cannot subsequently accept the employment from another objective of a doing
what has already been retained for the purpose of accomplishing.
Thought is that a person may not accept the subsequent chances of employment from another if it
involves the appearance of use or the possibility of using a confidential information that has been
received from the former client (Kinghan, 2019) . These actions are forbidden by the law and
also are part of the legal ethics. There are certain problems that can result from the so called
revolving door that has been address both in the rules and legislation of professional conduct.
There also some examples from history that have led to understood that there is a system of
5

justice that is prevailing in UK even if there are two types of lawyers that are solicitors and
Barristers.
For example in Belmarsh case, 2004 the human rights and empowered all the judges to review
the acts of Parliament so that they are able to check the compatibility with the European
convention on human rights (Welsh, 2017). The House of Lords ruled that a statue has allowed
to terrorist suspects to be detained without any trial breaching the suspects of human rights. This
case clearly shows how modern courts are not asking whether the government action has been
authorised by law but is also related to compatibility with the right (Carey2018).
The type of case held in year 2016 where Gina Miller case against the Government of UK
claiming that they cannot Trigger article 50 and the brexit without the Parliament Act. The rule
was in Millers favour in the year 2017 as the Supreme Court on the 1610 case of proclamation.
There is no doubt that oldest cases have the power to shape society and is also helping in
providing people justice (Eight cases from across history which still shape the law today, 2018).
UK law reporting:
There are situations in UK where there is only when the small percentage of cases are reported in
the law report series of all the cases reported there is only 2% of the cases that are being hurt in
Wales and England. These cases are also to be reported as cases of Legal importance (Andrews
and Lamb, 2016). Growth of electronic sources there have been a reported transcript that are
available on such legal database and it consists of judgement only. In the year, 1865 there was
incorporation of Council of law reporting was established so that there can be uniform reporting
against the strict criteria and there are still authoritative law report series. Since the Year 1865 all
the commercial Law Reports are established and some are part of England reports that are
covering the important cases but are more subject specialist report. The publisher of such series
helps in deciding the cases are to be reported or not (Samuel, 2017).
England the lowest courts are the magistrates and the Crown quotes (Mantle, 2017). Falling from
these are the high court’s decision and then comes the appeal Court followed by the highest court
that is the Supreme Court. Further there is a system of dual lawyers that are part of the justice
system. System of barristers and solicitors are very helpful to all citizens in having a proper
6

structure of addressing to all their legal issues and timely resolving then according to the
specified criteria.
Conclusion
From the above discussed points it can be said that in UK there is a common law country and all
the case laws and judgements are particularly important because they are the doctrine of
precedent apply. It basically means that judgement of each case is binding all the subsequent
cases depending on the similarity of the court that is there is a hierarchical structure of the court
system. Each case law becomes part of the law by setting legal precedents and there is no
legislation or interpretation of legislation.
7

REFERENCE
Books and Journal
Carey, P., 2018. Data protection: a practical guide to UK and EU law. Oxford University Press,
Inc..
Hudson, A., 2017. The law on financial derivatives (No. 6). Sweet and Maxwell Ltd..
Nutt, D., 2020. New psychoactive substances: Pharmacology influencing UK practice, policy
and the law. British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, 86(3), pp.445-451.
Stokes, S., 2019. Digital copyright: law and practice. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Lock, T., 2017. Human rights law in the UK after Brexit. Edinburgh School of Law Research
Paper, (2017/17).
Lloyd, I., 2020. Information technology law. Oxford University Press.
Parpworth, N., 2018. Constitutional and administrative law. Oxford University Press.
Fisher, E., 2018. Law and Energy Transitions: Wind Turbines and Planning Law in the
UK. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 38(3), pp.528-556.
Mantouvalou, V., 2018. The UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 Three Years On. The Modern Law
Review, 81(6), pp.1017-1045.
Andrews, S.J. and Lamb, M.E., 2016. How do lawyers examine and cross‐examine children in
Scotland?. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 30(6), pp.953-971.
Mantle, M., 2017. Mediation: a practical guide for lawyers. Edinburgh University Press.
Hanretty, C. and Vaughan, S., 2017. Patronising lawyers? Homophily and same-sex litigation
teams before the UK Supreme Court. Public Law, 2017(3), pp.426-449.
Carey, P., 2018. Data protection: a practical guide to UK and EU law. Oxford University Press,
Inc..
Welsh, L., 2017. The Effects of Changes to Legal Aid on Lawyers' Professional Identity and
Behaviour in Summary Criminal Cases: A Case Study. Journal of Law and
Society, 44(4), pp.559-585.
Kinghan, J.A., 2019. Lawyers Changing Lives: A Narrative Study of Progressive Lawyering
(1968-2018) (Doctoral dissertation, Goldsmiths, University of London).
Samuel, S., 2017. On the professional responsibility of international lawyers (Doctoral
dissertation, University of Reading
8

Online
Legal ethics, 2020[online] Available through:< https://www.britannica.com/topic/legal-ethics >
United Kingdom Law: Case law, 2020[online] Available through:<
https://ox.libguides.com/c.php?g=422832&p=2887381>
Eight cases from across history which still shape the law today, 2018 [online] Available
through:<https://theconversation.com/eight-cases-from-across-history-which-still-shape-the-law-
today-103466>
Legal systems in the UK (England and Wales): overview, 2020, [online] Available
through:<https://uk.practicallaw.thomsonreuters.com/5-636-2498?
transitionType=Default&contextData=(sc.Default)&firstPage=true&bhcp=1>
9