Immoral offenses and professional activity of a lawyer

It is indicated that, while revealing the essence of the legal status of a lawyer and its individual components (rights, obligations, guarantees and responsibility), we have repeatedly drawn attention to the fundamental importance of moral principles for the entire professional activity of a lawyer. This article, based on the specifics of the lawyer’s legal status, through the prism of revealing the essence of his immoral misdeeds, analyzes the negative impact of such misdemeanors on the authority of the legal profession as an institution of civil society and the rule of law. The positions of both domestic and foreign scientists are analyzed, who highlight various manifestations of the lawyer’s activity, which are inherently immoral. The position is argued, according to which the behavior of a lawyer can be immoral, which manifests itself in the form of committing: – intentional actions (for example, failure to appear at court sessions without valid reasons, various manifestations of disrespect for the court and other participants in the process, deliberate improper provision of legal assistance or failure to fulfill one’s professional duties, in particular, for selfish reasons); – unintentional unethical acts, primarily in cases of improper professional training of a lawyer in relation to activities in difficult and stressful situations. In order to reveal the tasks set before the author, namely to achieve the stipulated goal, the author used the dialectical method of learning legal reality and the methods characteristic of legal science (in particular, formal-dogmatic and systemic-structural). The article reveals the influence of the lawyer’s immoral activity, which is primarily carried out for selfish reasons, on the lawyer’s independent legal status. It is concluded that the lawyer’s immoral behavior, which affects his independence and objectivity of decision-making, is directly related, in particular, to the financial aspect of the lawyer’s activity, when the lawyer puts his interests above the interests of his client, or vice versa – tries to «help» one’s client at any cost, not shying away from means that contradict the principle of legality and moral principles, which undermines the authority of the legal profession and contradicts the fundamental principles of legal practice.