2025/07/03 by Steven Vaughan, Karen Nokes · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Health Professions · #Legal Education and Practice Innovations #Medical Malpractice and Liability Issues #Ethics in medical practice
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/1460728x.2025.2489201
openalex publication_date 2025/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/19
This article examines the professional ethics of environmental lawyers. Drawing on a survey of 126 and 39 interviews, we find that when it comes to attitudes towards legality in general and legality in hierarchical professional contexts, environmental lawyers seem to share the attitudes of other lawyers, as described by previous research. However, environmental lawyers otherwise demonstrated an approach to ethical choices that was remarkable in two ways. First, a notably high proportion expressed a willingness to exploit legal uncertainty for the benefit of clients, even where doing so would override countervailing ethical considerations. Second, while respondents spoke to environmental commitments in their personal lives – in choosing their career, in choices regarding consumption and private lifestyle – environmental considerations were muted in explanations of legal-ethical choices, even where these choices had evident downstream environmental impacts. We suggest that environmental lawyers may demonstrate here the ‘role morality’ (a potential disjunct between private and professional moralities) that scholars have found at play in other parts of the profession. We also reflect on whether these lawyers’ pervasive exposure to legal uncertainty in the polycentric context of environmental law, combined with a misconceived (legally incorrect) client-primacy approach to lawyering, may account for their distinctive approach.