Regulating Lawyers

Misconduct by lawyers is not merely a product of an individual lawyers actions. Lawyers ethical decisions will either be supported or undermined by the culture of the practice in which they work and, in turn, that culture is affected by the regulatory environment in which the practice operates. Regulation of legal practice can positively affect practice culture, but it does not necessarily do so. Our research, focusing on lawyers in their first year of practice,1 confirms that differing practice-based norms of ethical behaviour exist. Since we know from decades of research that ethical norms influence behaviour, we should take careful note of how regulation such as the Legal Profession Uniform Law (LPUL) might influence those norms.