News report: Lagos govt sacks judge who dissolved marriage, snatched complainant’s wife.
This news of a customary court judge in Lagos, Nigeria who coveted/ snatched the wife of a divorce complainant in a divorce petition before his court is funny and at the same time ridiculous, hence the reason for this post so as to buttress what is the legal and ethical viewpoint in the legal profession in this instance.
It is a rule in the professional code of conduct in most legal jurisdictions of the world that a lawyer shall not have a sexual relationship with his or her client unless such relationship already existed previously neither should a judge ever have a sexual relationship or any form of relationship whatsoever outside the courtroom with any party in a matter before the judge’s court.
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As lawyers are in a fiduciary relationship with clients, many clients are in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis their lawyer and there may arise the temptation or the carnal urge to take each other to bed but any sexual activity between the lawyer and the client would be unethical at the barest minimum and highly unprofessional, it could even be deemed that the lawyer used an undue influence or advantage to engage the client in the sexual activities.
Most law firms and organizations prohibit this act, although in some organizations it is unwritten, however, it is an unwritten rule that every member of the organization is expected to observe that “thou shall not engage in a sexual relationship with your client”.
It will also be a very difficult situation for a lawyer or a judge to maintain professional objectivity with the person that the lawyer or judge has engaged in a sexual relationship with and acts like this brings the most enviable legal profession to disrepute.
In many jurisdictions, sex with a client would likely result in professional discipline, potentially including suspension and even disbarment and an outright sack of the judicial officer involved, and sex between a judge and a party before the court in which the judge is presiding over is never to be heard of, it is a gross act of professional misconduct and highly unethical.
For instance, The American Bar Association prohibits a lawyer from having sex with his or her client. In the ABA Model Rule 1.8(j), enacted independently and applicable in various forms throughout the 56 states of the United States jurisdictions it provided thus:
“A lawyer shall not have sexual relations with a client unless a consensual sexual relationship existed between them when the client-lawyer relationship commenced.”
This rule is not to be overstretched to a person whose partner is a lawyer or to be misunderstood that a lawyer should not represent a spouse or have the spouse as a client but the condition is that the sexual relationship between that lawyer and the client must have existed before the person engages the lawyer and not after the engagement as a lawyer to the person. So, from the ethical perspective, a lawyer can represent their spouses, and anyone else they were bedding before the lawyer-client relationship began.
The purpose of this rule is to restrict the overreach in the Attorney-Client relationship and mostly to prevent lawyers from exploiting the vulnerability of the clients.