Professional Ethics — Power of Bar Council of India, Meaning and Standards of professional conduct and etiquette

A friend of yours who is an engineer can post a photo with a client’s project on Instagram, and nobody thinks twice. A lawyer who did the same with a client’s case could face a disciplinary inquiry. Why does the law expect more from an advocate in private life than it expects from everyone else? The answer is professional ethics, and the body that sets the standard is the Bar Council of India.

In two minutes

Professional ethics is the set of standards an advocate must observe because of the trust the public places in the Bar; the Advocates Act 1961 gives the Bar Council of India the power to lay those standards down, and the State Bar Councils the power to punish breaches.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Practical Training – I: Professional Ethics and Professional Accounting System on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.