Situation
The legal community needs to improve its way of addressing prosecutor misconduct. Most of the decisions involve ethical issues (Siegel & Worrall, 2014). However, individuals dealing with practical challenges may often be confused about what the right choice is. Many younger lawyers make mistakes or hesitate over a choice too much. From time to time, some professionals violate ethical norms, and public organizations and citizens file ethics-related complaints.
Proposed Solution
On the administrative level, a new set of preventive measures and sanctions should be introduced. The issue of misconduct is closely connected with ethics: people who hold different values project their own interpretations onto their professional sphere, but their personal opinions often contradict each other and differ from the established norms (Robbennolt & Sternlight, 2013). In order to improve the situation, it is necessary to take the following steps:
- To advance the specialists’ knowledge of ethics, online and print tutorials should be made available for all employees. Lawyers with less than three years of practicing experience should be allowed to take an ethics examination whenever convenient to them with the opportunity to get a 10% increase in pay. In addition, major law schools should conduct semi-annual conferences on recent judicial cases, ethical issues, and psychology.
- The legal community should establish rigid and official norms concerning ethical behavioral standards, publish the texts online, and provide print copies to local public libraries. Each jurisdiction should host regular seminars in which local lawyers can discuss the rules and ask questions.
- Review boards should investigate all complaints thoroughly and objectively and hold formal hearings when necessary. All parties should be ensured confidence in personal information and fair treatment.
- The legal community should establish a rigorous system of disciplinary penalties and make the information publicly available. Taking into consideration the severity of the offense, the following sanctions are suggested: private reprimand, public reprimand, suspension from legal practice, and the loss of the lawyer’s license to practice in the state. If found guilty of ethics violations, lawyers should incur the costs of all proceedings.
Benefits
- Less-experienced lawyers will have an opportunity to improve their skills significantly, while professionals will refresh their knowledge and pay more attention to topics that may have been forgotten in their everyday practice.
- The threat of harsh punishment will prevent lawyers from intentionally distorting the truth and violating ethics guidelines.
Possible Obstacles
- Involving all employees in the in-service training, discussions, and curriculum design will take time.
- The system of internal control should be perfect in order to detect ethics violations at an early stage and avoid unfair judgments.
References
Judgement affirmed in part, reversed in part, and case remanded with directions. (2016). Web.
Robbennolt, J. K., & Sternlight, J. R. (2013). Behavioral legal ethics. Arizona State Law Journal, 45(3), 1-76.
Siegel, L. J., & Worrall, J. L. (2014). Essentials of criminal justice. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
The ethical prosecutor. (2016). Web.
Van Brunt, A. (2015). Prosecutors shouldn’t have immunity from their unethical – or unlawful – acts.The Guardian. Web.