The lawyer they need, Not the lawyer they want

Why Sri Lanka’s Legal Profession Must Reclaim Its Moral Compass

• “People do not walk into a lawyer’s office on the happiest day of their lives. They arrive carrying broken marriages, frightened children, criminal allegations, domestic violence, grief, betrayal and uncertainty.”
• “Professional integrity is not tested only inside a courtroom. It is tested in waiting rooms, consultation rooms and court corridors.”

In an era increasingly focused on material gain and courtroom victories, the legal profession faces a deep crisis of empathy and integrity. Vulnerable citizens enter law offices carrying fractured lives, only to be met with cold delays, soaring fees, and alienating bureaucracy. Legal practice must shift away from destructive litigation toward compassionate, honest service, proving that a lawyer’s true legacy is measured by the human lives they protect rather than the cases they win. 

 Professional integrity is measured not by the cases we win, but by the lives we refuse to damage. Milani Salpitikorala Attorney-At-Law   

There are very few professions that ask society to place such extraordinary trust in another human being.  

People do not walk into a lawyer’s office on the happiest day of their lives. They arrive carrying broken marriages, frightened children, criminal allegations, domestic violence, grief, betrayal and uncertainty. They come to us at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, placing their future, and often that of their families, in the hands of a complete stranger.  

That trust is both a privilege and a profound responsibility.  

When we are admitted to the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka, we do not merely receive a practising certificate. We take an oath to uphold the law, discharge our duties faithfully and honestly, and conduct ourselves as officers of Court. The Supreme Court Rules governing the professional conduct and etiquette of Attorneys-at-Law remind us that ours is not simply a business, but a profession founded upon honour, courtesy, integrity and service to the administration of justice.  

Perhaps that is why I sometimes wonder what the senior members of our profession would think if they were entering practice today. Would they recognise the profession they once joined? More importantly, would they be proud of what they see?  

This is not a criticism of every lawyer. I have had the privilege of working alongside practitioners whose integrity is beyond question. They communicate honestly, prepare diligently, treat clients with dignity and remind us what this profession is capable of being.  

Yet I believe we owe it to ourselves to ask difficult questions.  

Somewhere along the way, have we become so focused on winning cases and our own gain that we have forgotten the people behind them?  

Professional integrity is not tested only inside a courtroom. It is tested in waiting rooms, consultation rooms and court corridors. It is reflected in how we speak to a frightened client, whether we return a telephone call, whether we explain what happened after a hearing, and whether we remember that behind every file is a person whose life may never be the same again.  

Too often, clients spend hours waiting to meet their own lawyers, only to leave confused, unheard and afraid to ask questions about their own cases. Justice should never begin with humiliation.  

Equally concerning is the perception that some legal disputes become unnecessarily prolonged. Clients who have already invested their savings, their time and their emotional wellbeing are sometimes left questioning whether decisions are being made with their best interests at heart or whether they have become secondary to a process they no longer understand. Regardless of the reason, every lawyer has an ethical duty to ensure that a client’s trust is never compromised by unnecessary delay or by conduct that creates the impression that justice has become negotiable.  

For many clients, every postponed hearing means another day’s wages lost, another loan taken to pay legal fees, another day of uncertainty and another night explaining to their children why nothing has changed.  

No area of practice illustrates this more painfully than matters involving children.  

Children miss school to attend court, interviews and consultations. They wait in unfamiliar corridors while adults debate their future. They absorb conflict they never created and carry emotional burdens they should never have to bear. Long before a judge delivers a decision, many have already lived through months, or years, of uncertainty.  

The same is true for victims of crime. They enter the justice system already carrying trauma. Every interaction with a lawyer, investigator or court official can either restore confidence or deepen the trauma they already bear.  

Professional competence alone is not enough. The most brilliant legal mind is of little comfort if it lacks empathy. Clients rarely remember every legal submission made on their behalf. They remember whether they were treated with dignity, whether someone listened, and whether someone cared enough to explain.  

Justice is not only delivered by judgments. It is delivered by the dignity with which we treat those seeking it.  

Our profession rightly demands intellectual rigour. We spend years studying statutes and precedents. Perhaps we now need to devote equal attention to something that cannot be measured by examination marks alone - professional integrity.  

Ethics is taught as a subject. Integrity is lived as a habit.  

It is choosing honesty over convenience. It is refusing to inflame conflict where reconciliation may still be possible. It is recognising that not every disagreement requires litigation. Above all, it is remembering that our role is not merely to win arguments and gain materialistically, but to serve justice.  

Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is not whether our profession still commands the respect it once did. Perhaps we should ask whether we continue to earn it.  

Because at the end of every case file, every affidavit and every judgment, there is a human being who entrusted us with one of the most difficult chapters of their life.  

Our legacy will not be measured by the number of cases we won. It will be measured by the number of lives we handled with integrity.