Conclusion

Wider duties in lawyers’ codes of conduct are frequently rather vague ‘catch-all’ phrases that often promise more than they deliver. Examples of how principles requir­ing integrity or promoting public confidence are put into operation tend to be rather

¹⁴⁷ D Nicolson and J Webb, Professional Legal Ethics: Critical Interrogations (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1999) at 111.

¹⁴⁸ A Odby, Lawyers as Gatekeepers': The Impact of Preventative Anti Money-Laundering Obligations on the Legal Profession in England and Wales (PhD Thesis, University of Westminster, 2006). restricted or anodyne. They involve complying with binding orders or requests for information from the Legal Services Ombudsman. Statutory inroads into the princi­ple of client confidentiality have not led to increased expectations of responsibility for lawyers representing organisations, including companies. Lawyers may not participate in client frauds but duties to members, shareholders or employees of organisations are often unclear.

Large corporations have greater ability than private individuals to harm people, society and the environment. Often, they cannot achieve their occasionally dubious aims without assistance from lawyers. Lawyers can design schemes so as to make cor­porate activities appear legal or to conceal their illegality from the authorities. One of the most striking lessons to emerge from the corporate scandals in the US is the failure of the professional regulatory bodies to take disciplinary proceedings against lawyers. If legal professions take this attitude to breaches of their own codes, it is to be expected that the state will resort increasingly to legislative controls.