Some lawyers are giving the profession a bad name. On Friday, a deputy public prosecutor in Sabah was sentenced to a year in prison and fined RM250,000 for soliciting bribes from two individuals as an inducement to withdraw a case that they were to be tried there. A stay of the execution of the sentence has been granted pending appeal. A fox in the henhouse? Or as Shakespeare would have put it, an ill-roasted egg, all on one side.
Other errant ones stain the profession by deceit. Friday, too, saw an elderly security guard lodging a report claiming that the lawyer he appointed to handle a land deal worth RM3.5 million had failed to transfer the proceeds to him. The police, too, have gone to the media with stories of lawyers defrauding their clients. The evil that such foxes in sheep's clothing do often harms the profession for long. People are not wrong to expect those with a wig on their head (now it is long gone) and a band around their neck to follow high ethical standards.
The first cure lies in the person of the lawyer. Obviously, this has failed. For some lawyers, ethics is not even skin deep. We should have learned from the wisdom of an ancient Malay adage: bagai mencurah air ke atas daun keladi (literally, like pouring water on yam leaves). Such people must be kept out of the profession. For others, the cure lies in law schools and the Bar Council. And if both fail, then the law is our last resort.
Start with law schools. Ethics is as old as humanity, but the schools, treating ethics as they did as part of philosophy, were latecomers to the subject. Even in England, the "crib" of many of our lawyers — at least those of old — the ethics of lawyering was a latecomer. While the first law school there started in the public gallery of the court in the 13th century, ethics in lawyering didn't surface until the 20th century. Malaysia, too, followed suit, a bit later. In spite of this, errant lawyers make it to practice.
Ethics is, for our errant lawyers, just a subject to pass in the exams. High marks don't necessarily mean their lawyering will be of excellent moral standard. Law schools need to figure out how to make ethics a part of daily lawyering. What the law school misses, the Bar Council — our second cure — must try not to. After all, its role isn't just to protect the interest of lawyers, but also the public. We say "try" because it is not going to be easy to spot errancy in a world of more than 21,570 lawyers. Also, due process that promises justice for lawyers and complainants alike requires time. But still, speedy decisions will help.
Finally, the law as a means of curbing misconduct among lawyers. Our laws do come with teeth, but sometimes the courts — based on the circumstances of the case — exercise their discretionary power to impose the minimum of sentences provided by the law. Perhaps deterrence lies in the maximum end of the sentences, especially given the increase in cases of misconduct among lawyers recently. When the going gets tough, the tough must get going.