职业行为准则

规则2.1:顾问

在代表客户时, a lawyer shall exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice. 在呈现通知时, a lawyer may refer not only to law but to other considerations such as moral, 经济, 社会, 政治因素, that may be relevant to the client’s situation.

评论

咨询范围
   [1] A client is entitled to straightforward advice expressing the lawyer’s honest assessment. Legal advice often involves unpleasant facts and alternatives that a client may be disinclined to confront. 在提出建议时, a lawyer endeavors to sustain the client’s morale and may put advice in as acceptable a form as honesty permits. 然而, a lawyer should not be deterred from giving candid advice by the prospect that the advice will be unpalatable to the client.
   [2] 建议 couched in narrowly legal terms may be of little value to a client, especially where practical considerations, such as cost or effects on other people, 是主要的. Purely technical legal advice, therefore, can sometimes be inadequate. It is proper for a lawyer to refer to relevant moral and ethical considerations in giving advice. Although a lawyer is not a moral advisor as such, moral and ethical considerations impinge upon most legal questions and may decisively influence how the law will be applied.
   [3] A client may expressly or impliedly ask the lawyer for purely technical advice. When such a request is made by a client experienced in legal matters, the lawyer may accept it at face value. When such a request is made by a client inexperienced in legal matters, 然而, the lawyer’s responsibility as advisor may include indicating that more may be involved than strictly legal considerations.
   [4] Matters that go beyond strictly legal questions may also be in the domain of another profession. 家庭 matters can involve problems within the professional competence of psychiatry, 临床心理学, or 社会 work; business matters can involve problems within the competence of the accounting profession or of financial specialists. Where consultation with a professional in another field is itself something a competent lawyer would recommend, the lawyer should make such a recommendation. 同时, a lawyer’s advice at its best often consists of recommending a course of action in the face of conflicting recommendations of experts.

提供建议
   [5] In general, a lawyer is not expected to give advice until asked by the client. 然而, when a lawyer knows that a client proposes a course of action that is likely to result in substantial adverse legal consequences to the client, 规则1规定的对客户的责任.4 may require that the lawyer act if the client’s course of action is related to the representation. Similarly, when a matter is likely to involve litigation, it may be necessary under Rule 1.4 to inform the client of forms of dispute resolution that might constitute reasonable alternatives to litigation. A lawyer ordinarily has no duty to initiate investigation of a client’s affairs or to give advice that the client has indicated is unwanted, but a lawyer may initiate advice to a client when doing so appears to be in the client’s interest.