LAWYERS IN THE ADVERSARIAL SYSTEM: NAVIGATING RESPONSIBILITY, MORALITY AND ETHICAL BOUNDARIES

Abstract

The present research aimed to explain relationship and prediction between adversarial advocacy, responsibility, morality and ethical considerations in lawyers. It was hypothesized that there will be significant relationship amid adversarial advocacy, responsibility, morality and ethical considerations in lawyers. It was also hypothesized that adversarial advocacy, responsibility, and morality will likely to predict ethical considerations in lawyers. In this regard, a correlational research design and purposive sampling technique was used to assess the relationship between study variables. The data was collected from 79 lawyers who are currently in practice. Findings of the study describes that there is no association and correlation found between age, adversarial advocacy, responsibility, morality & ethical considerations. But there is a negative correlation found in the adversarial advocacy and responsibility and there is a highly significance level in positive correlation found amid responsibility, sub scales of morality and ethical considerations. By regression analysis, study says that responsibility was a good predictor of ethical consideration and analyses were significant with 50% of variance. The study concluded that lawyers in Pakistan have adversarial advocacy may have very less responsibility, but the moral decision making and ethical consideration doesn’t have any effect on lawyers with either high or low adversarial advocacy.