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Lawyers As Officers Of The Court, Eugene R. Gaetke
Lawyers As Officers Of The Court, Eugene R. Gaetke
Vanderbilt Law Review
In its public assertions, the legal profession promotes a different model: lawyers are officers of the court in the conduct of their professional, and even their personal," affairs. The organized bar has expressly emphasized this obligation in each of its major codifications of the ethical obligations of the profession, including the American Bar Association's most recent effort, the 1983 Model Rules of Professional Conduct.
Lawyers like to refer to themselves as officers of the court. Careful analysis of the role of the lawyer within the adversarial legal system reveals the characterization to be vacuous and unduly self-laudatory. It confuses lawyers …