It is essential for law practitioners to have qualities and basic skills in performing the profession. Good communication and public speaking skills and qualities are necessary to argue, advise or persuade customers and exploit accurate information.
1. Moral qualities
The professional ethics of lawyers is reflected in two aspects of their professional activities.
First, a client hires a lawyer to protect the client’s legitimate rights and interests.
- Second, lawyers have the role of legal aid and counter-argument for judicial agencies to ensure justice and compliance with the law. Lawyers need to adhere to the rules of professional ethics.
Based on analyzing the views on the ethical qualities of lawyers, we believe that lawyers must be reputable in their profession and have a healthy lifestyle. To do so, a lawyer must have some essential moral qualities:
- Honesty: is the top quality in the ethics of a lawyer. Honesty is expressed through integrity, honesty, respect for truth, and respect for fairness. Only when the lawyer is honest in the relationship with the client can the client firmly believe in the legal history that the lawyer has or will help them with. Honesty requires that when practicing law, respect the truth and legal standards. Lawyers protect clients’ interests but do not go against justice because of that. Even if the client’s interests are paramount, a lawyer is not allowed to support fraudulent and illegal acts. Lawyers cannot help clients break the law or evade sanctions prescribed by law. When practicing, lawyers must be aware that they are defenders of the law, not slaves of their clients, and even more cannot be the ones to help clients escape the punishment of the law. In this case, the lawyer explains the law and convinces his client to understand and act following the law.
- High sense of responsibility is an indispensable moral quality in a lawyer. The professional commitment of a lawyer is reflected in his dedication to work, thoughtfulness, and caution when performing consulting and litigation acts. In defense activities, many lawyers, due to a lack of responsibility to their clients, only read the indictment and then “quit” it but did not study the case file. Or there is a case where a lawyer reads the file quickly, writes a defense article quickly, and does not have time to see the indictment of the Procuracy. Then agrees with the point of Procuracy’s view and argues roughly that as long as it is okay to be present at the court hearing so as not to violate the proceedings. A responsible lawyer is a lawyer who dares to think, dare to do, and dare to take responsibility for his actions. Lawyers must dare to confront legal opinions contrary to their own. The most dangerous thing for a lawyer is not having his idea and not knowing how to defend his view. This will make the lawyer passive in litigation, which will be ineffective.
- Professional secrecy is an ethical quality of the legal profession. The issue of professional ethics in lawyer activities must harmoniously combine the obligation to respect the truth with the responsibility not to disclose the secrets that the client has told the lawyer. Lawyers must protect client confidentiality; otherwise, the client may be reluctant to tell the lawyer all the facts about the incident. This will make it difficult for lawyers to protect the interests of their clients. For example, a client tells a lawyer that a crime he committed is not in the case file in an accomplice case, but when questioned before the court, he firmly refuses to plead guilty. Of course, the lawyer’s first task, in this case, is to convince the client of the absurdity of their point of view, to make them understand that it is better. On the other hand, the lawyer himself must be honest, not telling lies or using tricks to conceal or distort the pardon.
- Lawyers need to have compassion. A trustworthy lawyer must understand people and sympathize with their suffering. That is one driving force that makes a lawyer always aim to protect justice and social justice.
2. Professional qualities and competencies
- Strong legal knowledge and in-depth understanding of social life fields. The branch of law governs all relations of society. The law is not fixed but constantly changes according to the progress and needs of economic development and social life. To operate effectively, lawyers must always seek to improve their knowledge. Learn through books, learn through colleagues, and your own experience. Legal cases can occur in all aspects of social life. This requires lawyers to have extensive knowledge of social fields. In particular, the integration period needs lawyers to have knowledge of international law and be fluent in foreign languages to solve problems with foreign elements.
- Thinking skills help lawyers study records and grasp the details related to the case and the provisions of the law applicable to the point. Thereby, the lawyer prepares an interrogation plan and an argument outline to support his procedural views at the court hearing. Since then, the lawyer has the condition to determine which evidence can be used to defend their procedural views.
- Communication skills significantly affect the performance of lawyers. When dealing with clients, lawyers need to be polite, sympathetic, listen and show a willingness to care and share the problems that clients are having. Lawyers must make clients have complete confidence in the help that lawyers are giving them. Especially when dealing with defendants, lawyers must make them understand that they are not isolated from society. Through lawyers, society seems to be showing selflessness, helping them. Therefore, the lawyer becomes reliable support for the accused. Here, lawyers must know how to see the positives left in them to educate them. Russian psychologist V.I. Vaxilicy believes that a lawyer’s success largely depends on being tactful with others, on the right approach to the client, and the interaction between the lawyer and the investigator and prosecutor and judge (2).
- Litigation skills are expressed in the skills of writing arguments or petitions to the court and the skills of arguing and arguing in court. Advocacy skills depend highly on a lawyer’s ability to use language and nonverbal expressive means. Debating skills are demonstrated in the ability to speak well, argue closely, and have high persuasion. When participating in arguments at court sessions, lawyers use all means prescribed by law to convince the court of the correctness of their views. Here, it is essential to maintain everyone’s attention. Therefore, the lawyer actively balances the cognitive ability of the listener, leading them to follow his line of reasoning. Usually, the persuasiveness of a speech is made up of:
- The rigorous argument of the speech: The grounds given must be cited and proven about their origin, the proof process must ensure logic, and the conclusions must not be fallacious.
- The combination with non-verbal expressive means: The speaker must have a confident style and an attitude of respect for the listener. While expressing, it is necessary to have a harmonious combination of movements, gestures, eyes, intonation, voice…
The speaker must have extensive knowledge of the area being presented. A lawyer’s knowledge is the basis for forming eloquence skills.
- Emotional control skills: The open and direct nature of trial activities creates the impact of external conditions on the psychology of participants, including lawyers. Controlling and controlling their emotions will help lawyers gain self-control and firm courage when participating in the proceedings.
The quality of the lawyer’s professional activities depends on many factors, the most important of which are their personality’s moral qualities and competence. A lawyer without professional ethics will not be able to have a conscience and responsibility to the community, the State, and the law. An incompetent lawyer not only harms his clients but also reduces his professional reputation and affects the fairness and strictness of the law. To acquire high practice skills and meet the new requirements of the integration process, a lawyer must constantly learn and improve his personality qualities.
