Attorneys Hidden Misconduct

In my journey as a lawyer I experienced many acts and behaviours some attorneys does that seems to be a misconduct but is not an obvious one. However, and for the sake of educating the public of such unethical acts, here are these common unethical conducts:

1. Digression: The most behaviour I notice in court is digression where some lawyers are insisting to do. As law school students we learned to focus on the lawsuit subject as an ethical obligation.  Digression merely means to waste time and effort of the court and the opponent lawyer, hence, it should be considered a misconduct.

2. Indirect Nettling: Although indirect nettling might be considered part of point (1), but the object of doing it is different. This behaviour aims - beside extending litigation period - to irritate the opponent lawyer or its client to illegally response to such act, which might result into unfavorable consequences to the opponent or to the court session.

3. incomplete Authorized Representation: In Saudi Arabia, a client can issue a power of attorney document that contains limited representation rights. Therefore, some attorneys attend court day with incomplete document aiming that the judge will defer the hearing to another day, and that happens a lot. As a result, your time and effort as opponent of this misconducting lawyer is wasted.

4. Filing a Cross Case: Some attorneys tend to file a cross case exploiting this right by filing a lawsuit with no legal bases for it just to waste more time and money of the opponent. Filing a cross case solely for distracting and exhausting the opponent have to be considered as unethical and misconduct.

Finally, some of the situations stated above are old tricks and some of it are new ones, however, they all still considered lawful. However, and due to the misusing of what are considered as rights by people who are recognized as law practitioners, I think banding these acts should be the law. Protecting our judicial process should be our priority in face of these kinds of behaviours, defusing and monitoring these actions is the key.