Court Opinion

ID: 9536835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:07:48.68074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:55:24.036051
License: Public Domain

LEVINSON, Justice,
concurring.
I go to the trouble of writing separately, despite the fact that I join fully in the opinion of the court, because I feel impelled to get off my chest some additional and personal observations that are born of almost twenty-two years in the legal profession, almost seventeen of them as a private practitioner. If I have learned anything in that time, it is that what “goes around” truly does “come around” and that lawyers represent their clients’ interests best when they discharge their responsibilities in accordance with the preamble to the Hawai'i Rules of Professional Conduct (HRPC), which reflect the tireless efforts of various members of the Hawai'i bench and bar to whom we owe a debt of gratitude, and which became effective on January 1, 1994 by order of this court dated December 6, 1993. That preamble, which summarizes “a lawyer’s responsibilities,” provides in relevant part:
*18A lawyer is a representative of clients, an officer of the legal system, and a public citizen having special responsibility for the quality of justice.
As a representative of clients, a lawyer performs various functions. As ad-visor, a lawyer provides a client with an informed understanding of the client’s legal rights and obligations and explains their practical implications. As advocate, a lawyer zealously asserts the client’s position under the rules of the adversary system. As negotiator, a lawyer seeks a result advantageous to the client but consistent with requirements of honest dealing with others. As intermediary between clients, a lawyer seeks to reconcile their divergent interests as an advisor and, to a limited extent, as a spokesperson for each client. A lawyer acts as evaluator by examining a client’s legal affairs and reporting about them to the client or to others.
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A lawyer’s conduct should conform to the requirements of the law ... in professional service_ A lawyer should use the law’s procedures only for legitimate purposes and not to harass or intimidate others. A lawyer should demonstrate respect for the legal system and for those who serve it, including judges, other lawyers, and public officials. While it is a lawyer’s duty, when necessary, to challenge the rectitude of official action, it is also a lawyer’s duty to uphold legal process.
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Many of a lawyer’s professional responsibilities are prescribed by the Rules of Professional Conduct, as well as substantive and procedural law. However, a lawyer is also guided by personal conscience and the approbation of professional peers. A lawyer should strive to attain the highest level of skill, to improve the law and the legal profession[,] and to exemplify the legal profession’s ideals of public service.
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In the nature of law practice ..., conflicting responsibilities are encountered. Virtually all difficult ethical problems arise from conflict between a lawyer’s responsibilities to clients, to the legal system, and to the lawyer’s own interest in remaining an upright person while earning a satisfactory living.... Within the framework of [the HRPC] many difficult issues of professional discretion can arise. Such issues must be resolved through the exercise of sensitive professional and moral judgment guided by the basic principles underlying the rules.
I should add that none of the general precepts set forth above imposes any obligation on the legal profession not already expressly contained in the Code of Professional Responsibility, which was appended to the Rules of the Supreme Court by order dated October 13, 1970 (as amended).
I believe that section II.B. of the opinion of the court today should serve as a “wake up call” to those lawyers who have played fast and loose with the obligation of good faith pleading contained in HRCP 8(b) and 11 for far too long. Apparently, they have not learned that “[l]itigation is the pursuit of practical ends, not a game of chess.” City of Indianapolis v. Chase Nat’l Bank, 314 U.S. 63, 69, 62 S.Ct. 15, 17, 86 L.Ed. 47, reh’g denied, 314 U.S. 714, 62 S.Ct. 355, 86 L.Ed. 569 (1941).
Former Chief Justice Burger, who unquestionably had the credentials to assume his self-appointed role as the nation’s “commentator general” on legal etiquette, was right on the mark when he observed that:
lawyers who know how to think but have not learned how to behave are a menace and a liability ... to the administration of justice.... [T]he necessity for civility is relevant to lawyers because they are ... living exemplars—and thus teachers—every day in every case and in every court; and their worst conduct will be emulated... more readily than their best.
Address to the American Law Institute, Washington, D.C., reported in the National Observer, May 24, 1971, and reprinted in D. Shrager and E. Frost, The Quotable Lawyer 193 (1986).
*19We would do well to heed the wisdom of Judge Frankel, as reported in the Washington Post on May 7, 1978:
We [lawyers] must alter our prime axiom — that we are combat mercenaries available indifferently for any cause or purpose a client is ready to finance.... We should all be what I would term “ministers of justice.” As such, we would have to reconsider and revise a system of loyalty to clients that results too often in coverups. ... A favorite quotation in the legal profession ... is Lord Brougham’s declaration that an advocate “knows but one person in all the world, and that person is his client....” For him Lord Brougham said, the advocate would stand against the world.... Lord Brougham was wrong; we should be less willing to fight the world and ... more concerned to save our own souls. As ministers of justice, we should find ourselves more positively concerned than we now are with the pursuit of truth.
The Quotable Lawyer at 101-02.
In light of Judge Frankel’s views, there is some poetic justice in the fact that it was the Government Lawyers Section of the Hawai'i State Bar Association that insisted that Rule 1.13(f) be included in the new HRPC. HRPC 1.13(f) provides in relevant part:
If a government lawyer knows that an officer ... associated with the government is engaged in action [or] intends to act or refuses to act in a matter related to the lawyer’s representation that is a violation of a legal obligation to ... the public, ... the lawyer shall proceed as is reasonably necessary in the best interest of ... the public. In determining how to proceed, the lawyer shall give due consideration to the seriousness of the violation and its consequences, the scope and nature of the lawyer’s representation, ... governmental chain of command, and any other relevant consideration_ Such measures may include among others:
(1) asking for reconsideration of the matter; [and]
(2) referring the matter to a high authority in the government, including if warranted by the seriousness of the matter, referral to the highest government official that can act in behalf of the government on the particular matter as determined by applicable law even if the highest authority is not within the agency or department the lawyer represents; and
(3) advising that a separate legal opinion on the matter be sought and considered; and
(4) divulging of information to persons outside the government....
Although I believe that the actions of the Director’s counsel in this matter would reasonably implicate the provisions of the new rule, I wish to make it clear that I intend no gratuitous criticism of the Department of the Attorney General or any of its deputies in particular. My comments regarding the importance of “civility” in the conduct of the legal profession apply equally to all of its members, including myself. Collectively, everyone of us must be better monitors of our daily professional behavior.