Lawyers are often confronted with difficult ethical decisions

throughout their career, most especially those situated in

the corporate world. Lawyers encounter dilemmas that pit
career advancement and personal moral principles against
each other where each side has the potential to produce a
multitude of repercussions not only in their personal lives
and careers but also in a global scale.
Michael Hershman put into perspective such situation that
lawyers face in the corporate and global economic arena
involving issues such as corporate misconduct, bribery, and
corruption in light of the recent financial scandals throughout
the world. In his lecture at Pepperdine University entitled
The Ethical Minefield, he proposed basic approaches to
otherwise difficult dilemmas. The approach is that a lawyer
must play the role, simultaneously, of both a champion of
his client and be a champion of society. It speaks of two
important duties of a lawyer: duty to his client and duty to
society. Most of the difficult decisions that lawyers will face
in the corporate world are basically grounded on the
problem of which duty must triumph over the other.
Unfortunately, recent history is replete with issues and
scandals, most particularly in the financial and corporate
community, where lawyers placed far greater value on the
interests of their clients at the expense of society especially
in issues involving environmental compliance, health and
safety, human rights, slavery, and child labor. To resolve the
dilemma that a lawyer may be confronted with in such
situations, one must understand that it is not the rules and
regulations that should solely be the basis in deciding, but
more so the character and conduct that lawyers are
expected to observe with emphasis on the basic principles of
ethics and morality taught in the dining table by our parents.
Such seemingly basic and rudimentary approach allows the
lawyer to see the situation in a far more simpler perspective
and with such perspective he may differentiate more easily
the difference between what is unethical and what is illegal;
what is a matter of law and what is a matter of moral
judgment. In a world where there is a very fine line between
such standpoints, reconciliation may be reached by using the
legal tools that lawyers are equipped to pursue the greater
good, for what is legal may not always be ethical and
between the two, ethics or morality should always be the
victor.
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