MENTORING PROPOSAL: senior solicitors are 'a valuable resource for young lawyers'

Young solicitors are not receiving enough training in ethics early in their careers, a member of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal told delegates at this week's International Bar Association conference.

Leading criminal law solicitor John Clitheroe, a consultant at City firm Kingsley Napley, told a session in San Francisco that the tribunal was seeing fewer cases of blatant dishonesty.

But that, in his personal view, it was dealing with more solicitors who either did not think the ethical rules applied to them, or 'don't even know what they are'.

He called for greater emphasis on ethics earlier in the solicitor training regime, which would help allay the concern that commercial realities have started to blur the edges of the professional and ethical approach to the practice of law.

Former Finnish Bar Association president Pekka Sirvi said the trend of lawyers bending ethical rules in times of recession was emerging during better economic conditions.

'When one earns well and maintains a large and lucrative practice, the tendency to loosen and attempt to stretch the ethical rules seems to be greater for some reason,' he said.

'This could be called bluntly a new expression of greed and, if this phenomenon is real, this greed could be fatal to the fundamental values of our profession.'

Mr Sirvi said that to pass the bar exam, prospective Finnish lawyers are required to read more than 500 pages of legal ethics texts, the bar association rules, the written law concerning lawyers, and the rulings of the courts and the lawyers' disciplinary board in relevant cases.

The session, on the role of the senior lawyer in maintaining and developing ethics, heard that senior lawyers are instrumental in establishing and maintaining an ethical atmosphere of a firm.

Mark Tuft, a partner at San Francisco firm Cooper White & Cooper, who specialises in professional regulation work, said senior lawyers are 'a valuable resource for younger lawyers'.

He pointed to some firms that have a procedure allowing junior lawyers to make a confidential referral of ethical problems directly to a designated senior partner or to a special committee.

'Lawyers who serve as mentors and who pass down their experience should be rewarded,' he added.

Mr Clitheroe also questioned whether there was a link between deteriorating standards of dress in the profession and deteriorating ethical standards.

The more formal dress solicitors were expected to maintain when he entered the law in the 1950s denoted a certain level of standards and professionalism, he explained.

Neil Rose