The Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability tells you what will get you disciplined. It does not tell you what will make you trusted — and trust, in practice, is the asset that determines what work you are given and what you are permitted to do.
This article is the gap: the habits that are not in the canon and decide a reputation.
Candour about the bad news
Clients hire lawyers hoping for reassurance. The lawyer who says "this is weak, and here is why, and here is what I would do" is the one they return to, because they learn that your optimism means something.
Two practices:
- Give the assessment first, then the strategy. Not the reverse.
- Say when you do not know. "I do not know; I will find out by Thursday" is a stronger answer than a confident guess, and it is checkable.
Deadlines as a personal standard
The period is the profession's atom. A lawyer who misses one has done something the Code may or may not notice, and the client will never forget.
Three habits:
- Diarise on receipt, not on reading. The date the document arrived is the date the clock started; put it in the calendar the same day.
- Work to your own deadline, not the court's. An internal date three days early is what absorbs the crisis that will happen.
- Say early if a date will slip. Judgement is expected; silence is not.
Candour about deadlines is the single cheapest way to look reliable, and it is entirely within your control.
Boundaries with clients
The canon covers conflicts and fees. It does not cover the harder boundary: the client who wants to be comforted, the one who wants to call at midnight, the one who wants you to say the case is certain.
- Decide your availability before you are tested. Office hours, a channel, and what counts as urgent. Clients respect a boundary that is stated kindly and held consistently.
- Never promise an outcome. Not because the Code forbids it in terms, but because it is a promise you cannot keep, and the client will remind you of it.
- Do not take the case you cannot run. The instruction to refuse a matter you are not competent to handle is in the canon; the discipline of actually refusing is not.
Other people's money
Client funds are the clearest test of character in the profession, and the rules around them are strict for a reason. Three practices beyond the rules:
- Account immediately, not eventually. A statement the day money moves; a receipt the same week.
- Never mix. Not temporarily, not for convenience, not "just this once".
- Be boring about it. The lawyer who is auditable by habit never has the conversation.
How you speak about other lawyers
A small thing with a large effect. The profession is small; the opposing counsel this month is the colleague next year.
- Criticise the argument, not the person. In court, in correspondence, and in the corridor.
- Assume error before malice — and say so, once, privately.
- Congratulate the other side when they are right. It costs nothing and is remembered.
The habits that compound
- Read the file before the meeting. Not the summary — the file.
- Write the follow-up note the same day. It takes four minutes and it is the record of what was agreed.
- Return calls. Even to say you cannot help.
- Answer the question that was asked. Counsel who do this are trusted with bigger questions.
What professionalism is not
- Not formality. Manners matter; the substance is reliability.
- Not availability at all hours. That produces a lawyer who is tired and a client who expects more.
- Not certainty. The most trusted lawyers are the ones who say "probably" when they mean it and "yes" when they mean that.
- Not a performance of ethics. A lawyer who talks about integrity and misses deadlines has told the client which he values.
The practice link
Most of this is trainable in the review year, because the same habits appear there in miniature:
- Deadlines — the twelve-minute budget is a deadline you set and keep.
- Candour — the answer that states what you do not know is better than the confident invention; see when you cannot answer a question.
- Verification — checking whether a case is still good is a professional habit wearing an examination's clothes.
- Boundaries — a review year with a stopping rule is a rehearsal for a practice with one.
For the canon itself, see the Code of Professional Responsibility and Accountability.