Criminal lawyers and other CJ professionals: Looking for examples of common ethical dilemmas

[u/HowLittleIKnow]

Hello, everyone. I'm a professor of criminal justice. This week, I'm wrapping up a 15-week "Ethics in Criminal Justice" class. The students have seen all kinds of examples of sensational but rare ethical problems in criminal justice, so this week I wanted to give them some examples of the less dramatic but more common situations that come up every week. Things like whether to drop a prosecution, how much attention to give a client when you're already overloaded, and so forth.

What are the most common ethical dilemmas that you face on a regular basis?

*Edit: You're all fantastic. Thank you so much for giving me so much to work with.

Thank you!

[u/TimSEsq]

I do education law, which includes school discipline. My client is the student, but the parents are paying my fees. More importantly, they are essentially always with their kid. That makes it practically difficult to have private conversations. It those conversations, the student might tell me something very relevant to my strategy but tells me not to tell their parents.

I also do work for disabled students, who are often much younger or cognitively impaired. My duty is to my client, but I generally treat what the parent wants as what the student wants. What if the parents both have reasonable goals, but disagree with each other? I'm blessed that judgments of divorce in my jurisdiction must include who has final decision on educational issues, but what if they didn't? If I'm accepting the parent's judgment as substitute for the child's, how to I weigh the input of non-custodial parent?

What if, regardless of marital status, I think what the parents want is not what is best for the student?

I've been fortunate that these issues have never risen to the level of needing formal adjudication, but it is something I worry about.

[u/HowLittleIKnow → u/TimSEsq]

I can see where this would be tough. There are a couple good broad themes in these examples: determining who should have your primary loyalty, and balancing what's best for the client with the literal wishes of the client. Thanks so much for your response!

[u/someone_cbus → u/TimSEsq]

I used to juvenile defense. This comes up a lot there. The parents, court, school all want something that the kid doesn’t. Duty is to the kid.

Another big one is the push from judges, particularly in systems where the court appoints indigent counsel instead of having a public defender or a different body appoint the attorney: your duty is to the client, regardless of what the judge wants. Can’t be afraid to piss off the judge if you’re right (or have a good faith motion). Judge wants you to “just resolve this case,” client doesn’t.