The grades you don't want as a student and basic duties owed to clients, or the basic principles of ethical lawyering

Years ago, I wrote a short essay on whether we could reduce the professional conduct rules to just a few basic principles.  I concluded that, although we need the rules for guidance on specific issues, we can use a few general principles to define the notion of professional responsibility upon which all rules are generally based.

Along the same lines, a few weeks ago, Brian Faughnan posted a comment on “A recipe for ethical lawyering?” in which he expressed a similar idea by referring to the 5 Cs of lawyering:

Be COMPETENT at what you do
Recognize and respect your obligations of CONFIDENTIALITY
COMMUNICATE appropriately with your clients (and others) both as to content and frequency
Employ CANDOR in all situations in your practice [If you absolutely cannot be 100% truthful, and can’t simply stay silent, then don’t be false.]
Avoid CONFLICTS for which you don’t have, or cannot get, consent.

A few days later, Michael Kennedy followed up with his own commentary on the 5 Cs.

There is little to add to these two fine comments, but I will mention my own take on the 5 Cs, which is this: to try to get my students to remember the basic duties attorneys owe their clients, I tell them to think about the grades the do NOT want to get this semester: 1 F, 1 D and 4 Cs:

The F is for the Fiduciary duty owed to clients which in fact includes most, if not all, the others.

The D is for Diligence.

The Cs are for Competence, Confidentiality, Communication and Conflicts.

There are a couple of problems with my little word game for my students,* but it works for its purpose, I guess.... I hope...


*Note that “Conflicts” is, of course, not a duty – the duty is loyalty – but I needed a “C” to make the saying work!  Also note that I did not mention candor because, technically, the rule on candor says candor is owed to the tribunal, and my lesson was on duties owed to the client.  The equivalent of candor owed to the client would be Honesty, which I mention separately.  It is covered in the "catch-a;;" Rule 8.4 but can also be included in the notion of a fiduciary duty.