MISGUIDED (PUBLIC) REGULATION OF LAWYER’S PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT FOR LEGAL PRACTITIONERS (RPC) 2007

Abstract

It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behaviour can be regulated. The law may not change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless- Martin Luther King, Jnr., 1962.

The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers. Dick in Henry VI, Second Part, scene ii (The Complete Work of William Shakespeare, NY: Random House Value Pub., 1975, 579.

Introduction

Some readers of the title of this paper would be quick to pick quarrel with it. Why should any person deride our rules of professional ethics designed to stem the tide of prevalent misconduct in Nigeria? Is conduct regulation, especially as stipulated under the present rules of professional ethics meant to sanction infamous conduct in a professional respect not a thing to applaud?¹ Worse still, most would query why we have chosen to evaluate professional responsibility from an economic perspective, rather than from law. In their considered view economics is a distant discipline from law and its primary concern of justice and morality. We think such a stance is judgmental without more. Without attempting to be more controversial, permit us to first trace in brief the history of lawyers’ conduct regulation and thereafter offer possible answers to the queries, why we have chosen to evaluate professional responsibility law using economic logic.