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Friday, February 28, 2025

Chief Justice to new lawyers: It’s your duty to be ethical

by

Akash Samaroo
462 days ago
20231124

Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is urg­ing this coun­try’s lat­est batch of at­tor­neys-at-law to re­mem­ber the law and that their du­ty goes be­yond self, their ego and their de­sire to win. Ad­dress­ing 79 lawyers yes­ter­day dur­ing the Call to the Bar cer­e­mo­ny at the Hall of Jus­tice, Archie un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the mo­ment telling them that hence­forth they have the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and priv­i­lege to dis­pense le­gal ad­vice. 

“But al­ways re­mem­ber, no mat­ter how bright you think you are, you are just prac­tic­ing, in due course with dili­gence and hope­ful­ly with a good dose of hu­mil­i­ty you may go be­yond ad­vice to give good coun­sel. And your se­niors would tell you there is a dif­fer­ence,” Archie said, ad­dress­ing the new­ly mint­ed at­tor­neys and their fam­i­ly mem­bers.

“I be­gan to study law over 40 years ago, most of you were not born, and I still con­sid­er my­self a stu­dent of the law. Re­mem­ber al­so that the abil­i­ty to prac­tice in these courts is not a right or en­ti­tle­ment. It is a priv­i­lege, that is why you pe­ti­tioned for it. And you have to be deemed suit­able. And it is a priv­i­lege that may be for­feit­ed,” the Chief Jus­tice warned. 

The Chief Jus­tice al­so sought to re­mind them that be­ing an at­tor­ney-at-law is not on­ly an ho­n­our but a du­ty to be eth­i­cal. 

“With it comes great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and the du­ty to be un­scrupu­lous­ly hon­est with the court and with your clients’ af­fairs. It must nev­er be about you, your ego or a de­sire to win no mat­ter what. I do not mean to cast a som­bre note on this joy­ful day, but this is a solemn oc­ca­sion, and it would be re­miss of me to send you away with­out that ad­mon­ish­ing,” Archie said. 

Giv­ing the fea­ture ad­dress was Jus­tice West­min James who told the new at­tor­neys-at-law to brace for in­stances where their youth will be used against them. 

“Your gen­er­a­tion is con­sid­ered to have short at­ten­tion spans, ad­dict­ed to tech­nol­o­gy, un­able to han­dle crit­i­cism, maybe even lazy. How­ev­er, like gen­er­a­tions be­fore you. Your gen­er­a­tion will bring its own fresh per­spec­tive and unique set of skills and at­trib­ut­es to the le­gal pro­fes­sion. Your in­nate af­fil­i­a­tion with tech­nol­o­gy can be a sig­nif­i­cant as­set to the land­scape, which is in­creas­ing­ly digi­tised. As a Gen­er­a­tion Z at­tor­ney, lever­age this tech savvy­ness and help the pro­fes­sion to stream­line process­es, en­hance com­mu­ni­ca­tion and adapt to the ever-evolv­ing tech­no­log­i­cal tool such as AI,” Jus­tice James ad­vised. 

He too echoed the val­ue of bring­ing ho­n­our to a sec­tor that faces crit­i­cism and a lack of trust from the pub­lic. 

“When the pub­lic re­peat­ed­ly sees the jus­tice sys­tem fail, the peo­ple’s con­fi­dence in the law will fur­ther de­cline. We must fix it and you as the bar’s newest mem­bers are the key to do­ing so.

“To­day I chal­lenge you to help re­store that con­fi­dence to our pro­fes­sion and our jus­tice sys­tem. You are faced with a hy­brid world. Vir­tu­al court pro­ceed­ings oc­ca­sion­al­ly lim­it your in­ter­ac­tions with se­nior at­tor­neys, af­fect­ing your op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn from them. Com­bat­ing these chal­lenges re­quires proac­tive and ad­di­tion­al ef­forts on your part,” the judge said. 

Sev­en­ty-five more at­tor­neys-at-law are ex­pect­ed to be called to the bar to­day. 


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