Bocalan, Denmark G.

Problem Areas in Legal Ethics

What does it mean to be ethical? It’s a recurring question presented to me ever since being a
law student. The question has mostly been tackled with during our Legal Ethics class but every now and
then professors from other subjects deal with this topic for it is the goal of Lyceum of the Philippines
College of Law to raise ethical law students.

I have always seen ethics as a matter of right versus wrong. Two sides, ethical or unethical. It
could not get any simpler but little did I know that there is so much more into it than my basic
understanding of ethics. Come Problem Areas in Legal Ethics, my notion of ethics has been greatly
changed. It’s not as simple as I thought it would be. What we learn in class as ethical or unethical based
on the Canons of Professional Responsibility does not necessarily translate into the actual practice of
being a lawyer. Our good professor, Judge Arevalo, has taught us that the delineation between ethical
and unethical is quite thin. The gray areas in practice are very tricky.

Simply knowing what is provided by the Canons is not enough. Our Professor gave us the
opportunity to witness and somehow experience the gray areas in practice through out-of-class
excursions. I now understand a little what these problems in legal ethics are through the lens of the
following: a private practitioner, a lawyer-politician, a lawyer from the Public Attorney’s Office, a
prosecutor, a clerk of court, a Municipal Trial Court judge, and a Regional Trial Court judge.