Duties to clients

Military lawyers and judges receive powers and access that ordinary participants do not possess. Attorneys may receive confidential information, review restricted evidence, submit filings, advise clients, examine witnesses, seek sanctions, prosecute offenses, or challenge Government action.

Judges may issue orders, decide motions, resolve evidentiary disputes, manage proceedings, and impose consequences authorized by law. Because those powers are significant, professional responsibility is not optional. A legal system in which attorneys may fabricate evidence, secretly alter records, leak protected information, or manipulate judges would stop functioning as a meaningful legal system.

Professional misconduct is not the same thing as making a mistake. Lawyers will lose motions, choose strategies that fail, misunderstand difficult questions, and occasionally write something they later wish had remained inside their head.

Integrity requires legal professionals to be trustworthy when exercising official authority. Court records must accurately reflect what happened. Filings must show what counsel actually submitted, judicial orders must reflect what the court actually decided, and evidence must not be fabricated or secretly altered.

If counsel files a motion and later regrets the argument, the proper response is amendment or withdrawal through authorized procedure. Quietly deleting the motion and pretending it never existed is not an advanced legal technique. Knowingly falsifying, fabricating, materially altering, concealing, backdating, or destroying official legal records for an improper purpose is especially serious because it attacks the reliability of the judicial system itself.

A lawyer assigned to a case is expected to actively manage the matter. Diligence includes monitoring deadlines, reading orders, preparing filings, communicating with the client, appearing when required, reviewing evidence, and taking the steps reasonably necessary to protect the client's lawful interests.

Diligence does not require perfection. Emergencies occur, technology fails, workloads become heavy, and difficult legal questions sometimes require additional time. The concern arises when counsel repeatedly ignores cases, disappears during active litigation, misses significant deadlines without justification, or treats a pending case like a decorative icon on the dashboard.

Clients should be reasonably informed about significant developments in their cases. Counsel should communicate major rulings, important deadlines, disposition proposals, substantial evidence developments, significant procedural events, and matters requiring a client decision.

Reasonable communication does not mean the attorney must send a formal memorandum every time the docket changes by one line. It means the client should not discover from somebody else that judgment was entered three days earlier.

Counsel should also explain complicated matters in language the client can understand. Twelve unexplained Latin phrases may sound impressive but are not necessarily communication.

Some decisions are legally reserved to the client, while others involve litigation strategy entrusted to counsel. Where the law reserves a decision to the client, counsel may provide strong advice but may not lie or misrepresent the law in order to force a preferred choice.

Saying, "I strongly recommend this option because the alternative carries significant risk," is professional advice. Saying, "The judge already ordered you to accept this," when no such order exists is deception. Professional judgment means using legal skill to advance lawful objectives, not treating the client as an inconvenient spectator.

Confidentiality protects information learned through professional representation and allows clients to communicate honestly with counsel. Protected information may include client communications, legal strategy, sealed evidence, restricted records, investigative information, discovery material, and other information obtained because of professional access.

A case being interesting does not create an exception. Neither does the fact that releasing the information would produce an unforgettable evening in general chat.

Some disclosure may be authorized or required by law, judicial order, client authorization, or proper professional proceedings. The attorney should disclose only what the applicable authority actually permits or requires.

A conflict exists when another duty, relationship, prior role, or personal interest creates a substantial risk of materially interfering with loyalty or independent professional judgment. The easiest example is direct adversity. One attorney cannot properly represent both the Government and the accused in the same prosecution and call it efficiency.

Prior participation may also matter. An attorney who personally and substantially prosecuted a case should not later switch sides and represent the accused on appeal in the same matter when the roles are incompatible. Personal relationships do not automatically create conflicts, but they may where the relationship is significant enough to call professional independence into serious question.

An attorney owes professional loyalty to the client within the lawful scope of representation. Defense counsel does not need to personally believe the accused is innocent. The purpose of representation is to ensure that guilt and legal consequences are determined through lawful process rather than the personal opinion of counsel.

Loyalty does not require assisting misconduct. A client cannot order an attorney to destroy evidence, fabricate records, intimidate witnesses, or knowingly lie to the court. If a client says, "Delete those messages before the prosecution finds them," counsel should not respond, "Excellent, finally some initiative."