The lawyer’s responsibility for his negligence

The lawyer’s responsibility for his negligence

The lawyer-client relationship is based on trust and is regulated by a set of rules and regulations that aim to ensure that the lawyer performs his professional duties to the fullest extent. When a lawyer fails to fulfill these duties, this can be detailed in the following two axes:

First: The nature of the lawyer’s obligation and forms of negligence

The origin of a lawyer’s obligation to his client is an “obligation to exercise care” and not an “obligation to achieve a result.” This general principle is affirmed by Article 168 of the Civil Transactions Law, which distinguishes between an obligation that requires maintaining something or exercising caution (exerting care), and an obligation that requires achieving a specific goal.

In application of this, the second paragraph of Rule Sixteen of the Rules of Professional Conduct for Lawyers stipulates that a lawyer “exerts due diligence and reasonable effort in performing his work”, and the third paragraph of the same rule prohibits him from “promising to achieve a result in what is not at his disposal”.

Therefore, a lawyer’s loss of a lawsuit does not necessarily mean that he is negligent, as long as he exercised the same care as a careful and accustomed lawyer in such circumstances of the case.

However, there are specific images in which the lawyer is considered negligent and assumes his responsibility, the most prominent of which are:

1. Breach of obligations requiring a result: Paragraph 4 of Rule 16 excludes certain acts for which the lawyer is obligated to achieve a result by their nature, and thus represents “the lawyer’s obligation to attend hearings and submit documents on the specified dates.” If the lawyer neglects to attend a session in which his absence leads to the cancellation of the case, or misses the deadline for submitting an objection list, which leads to the ruling gaining finality, he will be responsible for this negligence because he breached the obligation to achieve a result.
2. Serious professional errors: These include errors that are not made by a lawyer who exercises minimal professional care, such as:

• Filing the lawsuit before a court that is clearly incompetent.
• Failure to submit a material document in the case that he received from the client.
• Ignorance of a basic and well-known regulatory rule.

3. Violation of the Code of Professional Conduct: Article 45 of the Code of Professional Conduct for Lawyers stipulates that “the lawyer shall be responsible for violating the rules.” Examples of this include:

• Disclosing the client’s secrets.
• Refrain from returning the original documents to the client after the case is concluded and he receives his fees, in accordance with what is stipulated in Article Twenty-Two of the Lawyers’ Law.

Second: Responsibility for the method of defenses

Accordingly, the lawyer is not asked about the style of his arguments simply because the court was not convinced by them or because they did not lead to winning the case. This is at the heart of his discretion as a professional.

But this freedom is not absolute, but is limited by commitment to the principles and ethics of the profession. The lawyer may be asked disciplinaryly if his pleading style constitutes a legal violation, including:

• Disruption of the course of justice: If the lawyer’s method aims to procrastinate and delay the adjudication of the case, then he violates the twenty-ninth rule of the Code of Professional Conduct, which obliges him to avoid “what leads to obstruction of the course of justice”.
• Violation of the dignity of the profession and respect for the judiciary: If the lawyer’s defenses include inappropriate phrases or contain an insult to the court or opponents, he is violating Article Eleven of the Bar Association Law, which requires him to practice his profession in accordance with Sharia principles and applicable regulations and to refrain from any work that violates its dignity.

Conclusion:

• The lawyer’s responsibility for negligence arises when he violates the “obligation to exercise care” or when he violates the “obligation to achieve a result” in cases specified by law (such as attending sessions and submitting memorandums on time).
• A lawyer’s responsibility for his defenses is not based on the weakness or lack of success of the argument, but rather on the fact that this method deviates from the limits of the right to legitimate defense and violates regulations and rules of professional conduct.

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