Don’t take your client’s case personal

This is not only disheartening but unethical and dishonourable to the legal profession.The legal profession is not just an avenue to earn a living, it’s a union of like minds, and every credible person fit and proper to be called to the Nigerian Bar Association automatically becomes a member of the family. The journey to […]

This is not only disheartening but unethical and dishonourable to the legal profession.
The legal profession is not just an avenue to earn a living, it’s a union of like minds, and every credible person fit and proper to be called to the Nigerian Bar Association automatically becomes a member of the family. The journey to being learned is not an easy ride, it takes five years of undergraduate baking, then one year of law school transformation into a gentleman.
During this tumultuous journey we meet friends of different cultures, ethnicity and religions who we learn to move along with in spite of the different character traits till the educational journey comes to an end.  In practise we still meet new people with different ideological beliefs and practise styles not suiting to ours but we still remain one big family.
The client on the other hand doesn’t need the services of a lawyer only when he’s in troubled waters and can’t swim out by himself; he then looks for the next available life raft i.e the lawyer to help him navigate a way out. In simple words, the client is only available when he needs legal service, after that, the relationship comes to an end except for a few who remain friends.
A client who has a problem with a neighbour comes to a lawyer for legal representation, he or she expects the lawyer to have the same hostility and antagonism with his neighbour or his legal representative like him or her, to the extent that the client gets a feeling of joy when you put it to the other counsel with aggression, raise your voice and get personal with his case. But to whose benefit?
As the saying goes “Clients come and go, but your learned fiends remain.”  Rule 26 of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Legal Practitioners (2007) provides thus, “Lawyers shall treat one another with respect, fairness and dignity, and shall not allow any ill-feeling between opposing clients to influence their conduct and demeanour towards one another or towards the opposing clients” but the contrary happens to be the case in most circumstances.  Some lawyers have taken a passion to verbally insulting opposing counsel or frustrate one another’s case without any just cause, all in a bid to impress the client.
It is understandable that some lawyers perform at their best when they take a client’s case personal; they work with passion, commitment and diligence with the belief that this is the sure way to secure the best interest of the client. I beg to disagree, in my humble opinion, a lawyer need not be personal with a case before he can successfully dedicate and devote himself to the cause of the client, he need not get personal with the case to devote his attention, energy and expertise to the service of his client. It is the duty of a lawyer to act in a manner consistent with the interest of the client and not to inherit the sentimental feelings attached to the case.
The downside to this is that the lawyer might get blinded by emotions and begin to use logic to make legal arguments, or begin to state personal opinion as principles of law or even go to the extreme of engaging in sharp practice to win the case at all costs.
 “An eye for an eye, leaves the whole world blind”, where both counsel on opposite sides decide to take their cases personal, there can be no meaningful headway as both would try to frustrate one another’s case thereby departing from the substantial justice of the case. The client who is more comfortable with both counsel fighting and throwing discourteous words at each other would be the one to suffer the consequence, as his case would be on stand still, though he may not know it.
The general responsibility of a lawyer is to uphold and observe the rule of law, promote and foster the cause of justice even if it will affect the outcome of his case, and maintain a high standard of professional conduct. A lawyer is responsible not only to his client, but to the court, his learned friends and the society at large, and should always remember that lawyers are ministers in the temple of justice.

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