Title: The Advocate as Witness: Understanding Culture, Context and Client
Abstract: The advocate-witness rule is an ethics rule of relatively recent origin, but with deeper roots. Despite its recent vintage as a rule, it has come to be the third most litigated ethics issue in federal court practice, running behind only conflicts of interest and communication with represented parties in importance. The adaptability of the advocate-witness rule to the particular context, culture and client demonstrates that some legal contexts give greater protection to the attorney-client relationship. As the review indicates, labor arbitration is significantly more tolerant of dual functioning as both advocate and witness, treating the issue as largely a procedural concern, so that fewer clients are separated from their counsel of choice. Labor arbitration is also a significant source of access to justice for many middle-class, and aspiring middle-class, workers. At least in the context of labor arbitration, the advocate-witness rule bends to give greater protection to middle-income clients.It is true that this chameleon rule is untidy and sometimes appears to lack coherence. The advocate-witness rule is grounded in multiple policy concerns that appear inconsistent because different contexts raise different policy concerns. The application of the rule is subject to some criticism. Bad decisions can flow from an unduly wooden application of the rule. From this review it appears that federal courts could be more respectful of-give more weight to-the reality of a strong attorney-client relationship, without going as far as labor arbitration. But perhaps chameleon rules have, like their namesakes, found the correct technique for adapting to the surrounding situation.
Publication Year: 2001
Publication Date: 2001-12-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot